Syracuse University Students Protest Tuition Hike

On Friday, February 5, 1993, angry students marched to the Office of the Chancellor protesting the 6.5 percent tuition hike that the board of trustees approved earlier that day. The protests had started Thursday in the Schine Student Center and continued Friday morning and Monday night at the Georgetown basketball game.

The Syracuse University Board of Trustees was scheduled to meet at 9 a.m. in the School of Management building, but they moved the meeting at the last moment to the Sheraton Hotel, which is private property, in order to keep the protesters out. Sheraton Security blocked the protesters from entering the hotel. About 50 protesters gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Sheraton Friday morning demanding that the University freeze tuition. Four student leaders, SGA assembly member Brian West, SGA president Jeremy Marin, SGA comptroller Seanna LaPlace, and SAS president Toriano Peterson, rented a room in the Sheraton in order to be closer to the meeting. Marin submitted a letter requesting to speak to the Board of Trustees but the person running the meeting did not read the request to the board until after they had passed the tuition hike.

Around noon, LaPlace announced to the crowd that the Board passed the 6.5 percent tuition increase and 4.75 percent room and board increase. There was a press conference scheduled for 1:30 in the Tolley Administration building to announce the tuition and fees increase. At 1:15 Friday, the student protesters met in front of the Schine Student Center to march over to the press conference. The Chancellor’s office filled with protesters shouting and chanting “money first, students last.”

In an attempt to control the questions asked and concerns raised Chancellor Kenneth Shaw met with the press shortly before 2 p.m. but students were not allowed into the room. Shaw refused to talk with the 200 angry students who continued to protest loudly throughout the press conference. After the press conference, Shaw told the students that he could meet with them at 5 p.m. Around 4 p.m., it was announced that Shaw would meet with students in a room downstairs, but that the room could only hold 34 students and the students must agree not to shout him down. Brian West organized the meeting, deciding who would get in and gathered written questions for the chancellor to answer. At the meeting, West read some of the written questions to the chancellor and selected who else would ask questions.

Where does all the money go? Why is the bookstore so expensive? Why do TA’s teach most of the classes? Where are the professors? Why does the library close at midnight and the food court stays open to four in the morning? The Chancellor responded to the last question by saying that the “auxiliaries,” which include operations like the bookstore, Utica College, DIPA, the Carrier Dome, Central Stores, the Athletic department, Health Services, Dining Services, residence services, and parking services, don’t make money—they just break even. In response to complaints about teaching assistants Shaw said “we are without a doubt the best in training TA’s.”

Shaw explained that the 6.5 percent increase in tuition, which is almost twice the rate of inflation, would raise $11.5 million. Of that $11.5 million, $6.5 million would go towards financial aid and the rest would go toward increasing faculty and staff compensation.

However, at SU, where demographic trends project a 20% decrease in the number of students, the administration is still putting resources into building new buildings. Shaw explained to the students that the reason for building Eggers Hall was that it would be more convenient to have all the social sciences in one place. He admitted that SU must now wait a while before they can fund raise again because they have to give the major donors a break before “hitting them up” again for more money. Since the University just had a major fund raiser for Eggers Hall, fundraising for financial aid would have to take a back seat, although the next planned fundraising drive, he says, will be targeted toward financial aid.

Students demanded to know why SU, purportedly a “student centered research university,” closed the main library at midnight but could keep the “capitalistic” Kimmel Food court open until four in the morning. Shaw responded by stating that “we don’t lose money by keeping Kimmel open.” “The Food court is not a capitalistic enterprise” although it provides “operating money” for the university. Shaw said, “Capitalism, to me, is when you make the profit” (and of course SU is not involved in making profits because it is a “non-profit” organization.) He stated that the University can keep the fast food enterprise open so late because it makes money, but since it cost the university money to keep the library open, they have to close it earlier. If the library could make money, it would stay open later.

Despite what Chancellor Shaw thinks, universities are capitalist institutions that operate within and are part of the global capitalist economic system. Universities have become a primary site of the production of knowledge. Most research, particularly scientific and defense related research, are tied into the university system. Research centers, such as the CASE center here at SU, are funded by public money in order to do research and to help develop privately owned high tech industries in an effort for industries to stay competitive with other parts of the world. The Patents and Trademark Act (1980) gave universities exclusive ownership of patents resulting from federally funded research. University research centers do not benefit most of the students or the members of the community as is often claimed. In short, the public is asked to cover expenses for research which benefits private interests and are excluded from determining the allocation and distribution of these monies. (see “Capitalism and Your University Education” by MCSU, the Alternative Orange, Vol 2. No. 1)

Universities have also become an important site for the reproduction of ideology, and hence, serve to maintain the capitalist economic system. The most powerful way universities fulfill this function is, perhaps, through the idea of “equality of opportunity.” That is, in a world where nine out of ten small businesses end in failure, universities seem to offer the last place of opportunity for people to “make it.” As Bertell Ollman put it in Dialectical Investigations: “In both its structure and content, higher education must appear to give everyone a more or less equal chance to prepare for the best jobs. Should the universities be perceived as vocational schools, providing low- level skills and indoctrinating students with the values and attitudes deemed important by their future capitalist employers, as a simple continuation of the tracking system already begun in high schools, the crucial ideological work of the university in promoting belief in the existence of a real equality of opportunity would suffer irreparable damage” (124).

Why is tuition increasing—not just here at SU, but across the country at both public and “private” universities? Government aid to colleges have fallen, and administrators often use this to put the blame on to someone else. But how are they spending tuition money and why won’t they tell us?

This cut in aid is largely due to the crisis of capitalism that has led the government to incur massive debt, even during the “supply-side economics” years of Reagan and Bush. Even though Clinton considers education a priority, it looks like his administration will be unable to help lower or even stabilize the cost of higher education. President Clinton is now asking us to pay more and receive less from the government. The federal government is going through a “restructuring” period of its own and it is not all that unlike SU’s. Both involve paying more and receiving less for the taxpayers and students while private industries pay less and receive more.

How can we fight the tuition increases? It is obvious that in order for real, long-term effects, students need to better organized and better informed. We cannot let this be a one or two day a year issue if we expect to accomplish anything. We need a student coalition that is active year round to organize and inform students about University practices. We need to keep the issue visible and pressure the administrators. We need to demand more information about how the University spends its money.

Tuition increases should not take anyone by surprise. On February 2, 1990, about 200 members of a student coalition arrived at the Administration Building—where the Board of Trustees were scheduled to meet—to protest the proposed 9.94% tuition increase. Apparently, administration officials had somehow learned of the planned protest and the meeting was canceled. Instead of meeting in person, Chancellor Melvin Eggers “met” with seven members of the executive board in a telephone conference call, and they approved the tuition increase.

In the preceding week over 100 students had showed up at a meeting of the University Senate to protest the increase. Student demonstrations at the Administration Building interrupted business, and a boycott of the bookstore and Schine Dining was relatively successful (the New York Times reported a 73% drop in Schine Dining business). The student coalition (including SAS, SGA, SCARED, the Black Voice, The Hispanic Action Society, and People for Peace and Justice) made three demands: compensation for the workers which SU had laid off in retaliation for the boycott; release of complete budget figures; and no tuition increase. Although none of the these demands were met, there has not been an increase over 7% since then—compare that to the previous years increases of approximately 9%, 12%, and 10%. The point here is not that this years tuition increase is lower than it has been, but that the cost of education keeps rising and that students need to constantly organize for a more affordable education.

What is at stake here is not merely a matter of tuition hikes and the immediate consequences of these hikes—forcing students to discontinue their education—but a matter of who has the power to determine how public monies are to be used: what ends and interests will they serve? In order to ensure reproduction of the present system of property, the dominant modes of authority must also be reproduced, in particular, those modes which exclude most people from participating in decisions regarding the distribution of social wealth. Hence, for example, Eggers makes private phone calls, etc., in order to prevent student representives from having any say in tuition hikes. In this way private modes are reproduced and public modes of authority, those modes which would involve democratic determination of resources, are excluded.

Just because Syracuse University is a “private” institution does not mean it has no “public” responsibilities. And just because, in late capitalism, an education is not a “right”, but a “privilege”—as well as a means of dividing and separating people into different classes—does not mean that it should be this way or that it must be this way. But the only way that this can change is through struggle. And for this we must begin to understand how this particular site of struggle relates to others. In more concrete terms this means that students whose interests are in transforming the system need to form a permanent coalition to constantly pressure the university to lower the cost of education and tell us where our money is going. University officials plan to raise tuition 6.5 percent annually for the next four years. It is time now to start protesting these tuition hikes and organize for affordable education.

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