This letter is in response to last week’s “raise hell” tuition rally. As a member of the Athens community for almost three years, working restlessly to be a student activist for social and environmental justice, I am disappointed in our Board of Trustees and the folks in Cutler Hall. What does it say about your position, if you are too scared to bring one person OUTSIDE to have a discussion? It must be hard to leave the well-conditioned space inside. As many will see, the list of demands this protest has created has also opened the doors for getting all our issues out on the table.
Although I am not completely affected by the potential tuition hike, I understand that it matters. Most importantly, it matters on more than just one level. Raising tuition will put Ohio University on a pedestal for furthering a lack of multicultural and rural student accessibility, a lack of strategic, socially responsible investments, and a lack of commitment to its customers: your faithful students. I was proud to have marched with many of the faithful. I am not usually one to scream and holler, but the energy filled the landscape of the university. I do not want this to die. After all, we’ve raised hell.
In addition to solving the tuition hike, this collective action has catalyzed a framework of the students’ demands. Divesting from fossil fuels, becoming a conflict-free campus and giving student trustees a real vote is all the same fight. Students, we must look at the oppressive nature of our situations and realize that injustices can be seen if we recognize these issues as one problem and as one holistic approach. I urge you to keep fighting.
At the end of the day this is a questioning of our resilience. Is it resilient to guarantee a tuition hike for years to come? Is it resilient to be invested in irresponsible endowments? Is it resilient, Board of Trustees, to neglect your direct community and forget how to speak face-to-face when the door is knocking? The answers to these questions are an obvious no. A lack of resiliency is a lack of sustainability, and a demanding lack of proper management practices. We cannot move forward as a university, and more urgently, as a society, if we don’t start changing our ways. We have been blinded by inequalities for too long.
We have an amazing voice as students and if we continue to push the cozy collective within Cutler, they will listen.
I GUARANTEE IT.
Mathew Roberts is a junior studying strategic communication at Ohio University.
