With a frigid outlook on college debt, Ohio University students protested in an attempt to heat up discussion about tuition with administrators.
Students stood in shorts and T-shirts in 34-degree weather outside Baker University Center to symbolize the need to halt tuition increases while members of the Ohio University Student Union handed out ice pops.
“Standing outside in the snow only represents the cold hearts of the administrators and the cold shoulder they’ve been giving us,” said Jacob Chaffin, a spokesperson for the OU Student Union and a junior studying education.
Dressed in only a tank top and shorts as it snowed, Ellie Hamrick, a senior studying anthropology, said that the need for the tuition to stop rising is imperative.
“Forty percent of Ohio University students said that they would drop out if the tuition at the university were to go up any higher, according to the Student Senate survey they sent out,” she said. “We are making this symbolic gesture to make the need of students known to administrators.”
The university has increased tuition cost by 3.5 percent in the past three years, making tuition cost $10,215 annually from the former $9,870 annual cost, according to a previous Post article.
Jack Opal, a protestor and a senior studying art history, said that because of the increases in tuition, many of his friends have dropped out of college.
“We are reaching crisis level with student debt,” Opal said. “The cold doesn’t hurt as much as the possibility of another rise in tuition.”
OU President Roderick McDavis said in a statement Thursday afternoon that the university understands the frustration toward tuition hikes.
“Ohio University realizes that its current funding model is not sustainable in the long term,” McDavis said. “With the understanding that we cannot continue on the same path of increasing tuition … we have spent the past eight months researching and exploring new tuition options and models.”
McDavis said that the university was looking for alternative ways of trying to save students money and make enrollment at OU more affordable.
“One of the tuition approaches we are currently discussing with the university community and our Board of Trustees is a guaranteed tuition model,” he said.
A guaranteed tuition model aims to ensure that incoming students pay the same tuition rates for four years and has the ability to give OU students more certainty regarding the cost of enrollment.
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