It’s official: Trustees raise tuition for summer session

The Board of Trustees unanimously passed an increase on Summer tuition students have been fighting against for months. Tuition for this upcoming Summer quarter will be increased 10% for non-resident undergraduates and 12% for residents. When the decision was made on May 12, students were left with six weeks to come up with the extra cash and less than seven days until registration for Summer opened to decide whether or not they could foot the bill.

Over a dozen students gave public comments to the Board adding to the nearly thirty who did at the last meeting. All comments made were opposed to the tuition hikes and based on the Board’s decision, fell upon deaf ears. While the measure was reduced from a 14% increase for all undergrads after a landslide of critical feedback from students, the “concessions” made were too little and what they took was too much.

TESC President Les Purce prefaced the meeting with a plea for the community of Evergreen to work together, with the Board, to bring their concerns to the state legislature where the real decisions were made. After passing the tuition increase quietly and quickly amidst other agenda items and Trustee Paul Winters was joking around with other trustees mere moments after the vote, the Board has proven once again that they are not the allies of the students but antagonists and barriers to their education.

A working relationship requires interdependence, a symbiotic bond where the success of each individual is tied in a positive relationship with the success of every other individual. This is partially what is meant when the word solidarity is used. At Evergreen, students, staff, and faculty all are engaged in symbiotic relationships. The student needs the faculty to be a guide for their learning experience and the faculty would not have their jobs if it weren’t for the students’ desire to grow intellectually or study a skill or trade. Staff depend on continued customers in the form of students and faculty so they are not cut from their jobs and livelihood. Students and faculty depend on staff in almost every facet of their lives both on and off campus. Everything from the food you eat, the buildings you sit in, the path you walk on, and the transcript you’ll request when you leave are created, maintained, served, and overseen by workers.

This same relationship does not exist with the Board of Trustees and any of these groups. They for the most part do not live in Olympia. They are not elected by the Evergreen community so their positions are not beholden to it. They make their living elsewhere and are not financially compensated for being a trustee, so their livelihood doesn’t depend on it. At best, they depend on catering to bring an assortment of danishes and beverages to each board meeting.

How does this matter in reference to Purce’s professed desire for us to work together and bring this to the legislation? The Board of Trustees is selected by Washington’s governor and they in turn nominate the college’s President. As a group, they are more beholden to the state legislature than they are to the student body they are elected to serve. While Purce was the only college or university president to go to the legislature and testify against removing tuition increase caps, something that other state institutions even hungrier for money jumped at, the Board has not shown that they are prepared to go against those who keep them in charge at Evergreen.

Dixon McRenyolds, the student trustee, has been quoted every time a story has been done about the Board of Trustees in the Cooper Point Journal as being in total shock at this situation. He has said on numerous occasions that he spent weeks flyering against the tuition hikes. Out of the thousands of flyers he printed up and e-mails he sent out, he received only 30 responses. There is a difference between being asked what you think in a survey and having agency and power over the decisions which influence your life. What if students had votes on how school funds were spent or how much tuition would be raised knowing full well the budget situation? What is students were voting, active members in their future as opposed to passive opinions for someone to play pollster with? If students sharing painful stories about how they can not afford to go to school if this passes does not change their minds, how can you convince me that checking “strongly disagree” will be a success?

So we continue with the twisted narrative of boom and bust capitalism where the workers of the world experience little of the boom and are expected to shoulder the full weight of the bust. At Evergreen, students cannot leave the merry-go-round of raised tuition and decreased services just as faculty and staff surely face the threat of furlough days and pink slips. While this happens, President Purce gets his contract amended to have a 401(a) retirement plan and Trustee Denny Heck raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for his 2010 congressional bid.