As Occupy Wall Street enters its eighth week, the country is taking notice.
The movement is growing as a different kind of protest against the government’s policies and the actions of Wall Street bankers who have exacerbated the disparity of wealth in this country.
It is presumably in this spirit that a similar protest, which has labeled itself “A New AU,” sprouted last month with a rally on the Quad, demanding that AU’s administration become more transparent and responsive to the needs and concerns of students.
Regrettably, I didn’t learn of this campaign until reading an article and op-ed about it in the Oct. 25 issue of The Eagle.
But something else from that issue struck me even more: a letter to the editor from a sophomore explaining how she was being forced to transfer out of AU due to her financial aid being cut by $15,000.
“I feel betrayed by this University, which claims to put its students first,” she wrote.
And she is not alone.
Even as the cost of attending AU continues to increase year after year, I know dozens of students – myself included – who have suffered cuts to their financial aid, forcing themselves and their families to make up the difference with ever-increasing amounts of debt.
Personally, I have many nights where I go to sleep worrying about the possibility that I too will have to drop out from AU if the cost of attendance becomes even more prohibitive.
Yet also, in that same issue, was a story about the new WONK video advertisement, which cost the university $35,000 to produce. It’s part of a $1 million budget allocated to the WONK campaign for this fiscal year.
How can AU possibly justify spending that much on such an unpopular marketing campaign when so many students are in need of greater aid?
One million dollars would be enough to fully fund 37 more Presidential Scholarships of $27,000 each, to say nothing of how many smaller grants could be funded with that money.
That is but the tip of the iceberg of examples where students need a seat at the table, which is why I fully support the “A New AU” movement and what it seeks to accomplish.
But as much as the campaign reflects a lack of accountability by the administration, it also reflects a lack of action by the Student Government.
The SG is supposed to be the voice of AU students to the administration.
Instead, we have an SG focused more on promoting its own programming and wading through its own internal policies and procedures than directly connecting and engaging with the students it represents.
Much like how Occupy Wall Street grew as a response to the inability of politicians to stand up to the corporations, A New AU is a reflection of the ineffectiveness of the Student Government in standing up to the administration on behalf of the students who need them to do so.
I have long said that AU cannot truly be the country’s most politically active university until we start caring what happens here on our own campus.
I am encouraged by the emergence of the “A New AU” movement, and I would like nothing better than to see it grow into our own Occupy WONK Street, as it were.
Now is the time when we, as AU students, need to stand up for our rights and our voice.
Let’s remind our University administration and our Student Government that they work for us, and that they ought to start listening.
Douglas Bell is a junior in SOC. Please send comments and responses to:
