Are we, as students, supposed to accept everything that we are told as fact or are we to use common sense and deduction to determine when something may not be as true as it is claimed to be?
Thursday, January 24, I decided to attend the first of two hearings regarding the new tuition increases that are being proposed for this coming fall semester (I found out about this from a professor that took the time to inform his students about the proposed increases).
Prior to attending the hearing, I had already prepared some questions for the panel that would be explaining the proposed increases. Out of the six questions that I prepared, one in particular was for me of great importance; why had none of my friends and I received an email from an administrator indicating that “all students” were recipients? Instead what I received was an email from a professor (forwarded from another professor to me). This to me indicates that not all students were made aware of the hearings. I thought that maybe someone just forgot to send out such email and that there was a simple explanation for such a mistake.
When it came to asking the question, I was informed that such an email was sent out to all students and that it had gone out earlier in the week. They, those that provided the answer, indicated that maybe such email had ended up in the “trash” of my email or just overlooked. This response left me unsatisfied; I knew that there was a story behind the not-so-clear answer given to me. (Unless all these emails are lost in cyber space and are looking for their way back to TAMIU…could happen….one in a million chances…but it could happen if the right people find them)
In order to prove myself correct, or incorrect for that matter, I decided to do a little polling of my own as soon as I left the hearing and this is what I found:
I asked several professors if I could interrupt their classes and ask the students present a question that would take up no more than three minutes; they agreed.
One of the classes that I polled was Dr. Francis Rhodes’ Thursday night class (which had some 30 plus students). The students that were there can verify that I did in fact do this. Not a single student from that class could verify that they had received an email regarding the hearings from an administrator. However, they did mention that they had received emails concerning parking and the different events that were taking place that evening (which did not include mention of the hearings). Some students even noted that they saw a flyer earlier that day concerning the tuition increase hearings but not a single student could say that they did receive an email in their dusty accounts (never mind that it has been widely encouraged for students to check their dusty account).
I did the same for one of Mr. Mark Webber’s classes and encountered the same exact responses. I would like to take a moment and note that by that point I had taken the answers of over 70 students for my poll, is it accurate? (maybe not scientific, but pretty darn close)
For not a single student to verify that they received an email from administration (either from the APR officer of the school, the AVP of Student Affairs and so on) leads me to think that I was misled.
When I approached a member of the Student Government (the vice-president) about the lack of appropriate notification, I was informed that they (SG) too had just found out about the increases and that there was not enough time to post announcements because the semester just started.
Let me clear one thing before continuing, I support the tuition increases and consider them to be progressive increases.
What I don’t support is for the administration not to take all the appropriate measures to inform the student body that they could be paying more for their education in a matter of months. Would more students have showed up had a simple email been sent to all students? Maybe…maybe not (I guess we will never know). The point is, as the most important people on campus, we students deserve the opportunity to be better informed of the changes that will directly affect us.
We attend a university and are supposed to be learning how to become more educated and better citizens. How are we to achieve this if we do not get the opportunity to be informed so that we can put to practice what we learn as a democratic society; to question and voice our opinions?