Students must fight for a freeze on tuition

The increasing cost of tuition has a disproportionate impact on black, Latino and other minority students and working class and poor students of all races. Money is the single biggest factor in attrition from higher education; student government must take a pro-active stand on the issue.

Jeffrey Kosseff's column criticizing the resolution for a tuition freeze ("A Veruca Salt-style approach to University financing," 11/4/99) put forward by DAAP to MSA consisted of four basic components. 1) A tuition freeze would be great, but is not possible. ("I'd love a freeze on next year's tuition"), 2) A tuition freeze would be very bad, and is not possible. ("A tuition freeze would push us behind other universities."), 3) An argument for the supposed impossibility of a tuition freeze. (This part included the Final Word on what is and is not possible from the honorable state Sen. John Schwarz, whose patronizing Kosseff mistook for learned advice.), 4) A halfhearted apologetic for the rest of his column in the form of lame proposals as to what students can do to limit hyperinflationary tuition increases.

Kosseff makes many of the same self-contradictory arguments as the MSA members who spoke against DAAP's resolution. Underlying the contradictory arguments, the reason for the 23 Assembly members voting against a resolution plainly in the interest of the students whom they are charged to represent is anxiety over administrative opposition to the Assembly coming out for a tuition freeze.

MSA members foretold a catastrophic decline of facilities in the face of a tuition freeze, side by side with the mathematically erroneous "It would only save me about $100 next year." Simultaneously a tuition freeze is said to be financially decisive and of no consequence - decisive to the University, and of no consequence to individual students. Both sides of this nonchalantly disingenuous argument are false.

The same happy contradiction is presented in regard to the force of an MSA decision. On the one hand, MSA would "tie the administration's hands" (MSA vice president and Blue Party member Andy Coulouris), and on the other hand "a Michigan Student Assembly resolution carries less weight than Calista Flockhart." Here, simultaneously the force of an MSA decision is said to be both decisive and of no consequence. The first metaphor of MSA binding the administration hand and foot and dictating its every move is, for better or worse, not an accurate representation of the balance of power between the two organizations; nor is Kosseff's callus, sexist metaphor about the supposed powerlessness of MSA accurate.

The Assembly is, of course, neither all-powerful nor powerless; its power is in large part determined by its will to seek the power it can have. The Assembly gets its power, both the modest power it has now, and the quite substantial power it could have - but that the majority of its current members fear to use - from the students. To acquire the power it can, MSA would have to organize and represent students. This is precisely the question raised by DAAP's resolution for a tuition freeze. Will MSA represent and fight for student interests - if it will, it can have the power necessary to influence core governmental education policy, including forcing the relevant government bureaucracies to find education money elsewhere than students' pockets.

Our government currently has many hundreds of millions of extra dollars lying around that they find no better use for than killing many women, men and children in places like Yugoslavia and Iraq; this money would be better spent improving educational access and quality at places like the University.

The money is there; the question of how it will be spent is not set in stone, it is a question of the balance of power. MSA ought to do what it can to shift this balance of power to students.

- This viewpoint was written by LSA sophomore Erika Dowdell and

Rackham student Jessica Curtin.

11-18-99