Syracuse University recently announced that the school would be raising tuition prices for upcoming years. I feel confident that I speak for everyone when I say I was totally surprised and not at all expecting this inevitable thing that has pretty much been happening exponentially for the past 50 years. What a hum-dinger!

I understand that people have their reasons for getting up in arms about this whole tuition cost situation. It’s money coming from our pockets (I’m sure there aren’t any people at SU whose parents help them out with tuition, after all) and so it is natural to get a little upset. But let’s try to keep things in perspective — there are plenty of areas of SU that could use a little extra financial help.

To start off with, there are the basketball and football teams. It breaks my heart to see these athletic scholars having to walk around draped only in one or two outfits sponsored by Nike. And from what I understand, some of these people only get one hired tutor.

What, are we living in a Hooverville? A full ride to SU is chump change, considering what they could have gotten had they been allowed to go pro — pour some tuition money in their direction. It kills me to see these stars get short-changed.

And the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications only has one state of the art building at the moment for their students. Only one! Why should the future titans of broadcast have to spend 80 percent of their days holed up in buildings that look like they came right out of pre-Soviet era Minsk?

Sure, it is among the smaller of the SU colleges in terms of population, but that is no matter. Newhouse is clearly hurting in terms of dollars being spent over there.

On the flip side, there are a few places on campus where clearly things are as good as they can be and putting more tuition money into their funding would be an utter waste of time and money.

For example, busing. From my understanding, Connective Corridor and the South Campus buses consistently operate as if they are part of a well-oiled machine. I don’t think I have ever heard a student complain about the bad bus system here — if anything, they usually sound overwhelmed by its efficiency! Decision-makers, don’t go improving this part of campus life. It’s already covered.

The dining halls also really seem to be maxed-out in terms of quality. So people with legitimate, often times very dangerous allergies and an agenda of eating healthy want the dining halls to start carrying more options for them? Boo-hoo. We’re not Rockefellers, people. Take a slice of Sbarro pizza and stop complaining.

Same goes to you, students who take issue with the dorms, and the never properly working heating system that allows students virtually no control over whether or not their room is freezing or boiling-lava hot. This is college, not some fancy hotel.

Tuition raising will only be a scary event if the university chooses to foolishly throw money into its already stellar areas, and forget to push money toward those who are clearly hurting for financial help.

Chelsea DeBaise is a senior writing major at Syracuse University. She would like all the money from raised tuition to go toward more guacamole in the dining halls. She can be reached via email at cedebais@syr.edu or on Twitter @CDeBaise124.

Published on March 20, 2014 at 12:54 am