I am going to take a slightly non-traditional approach and say that I absolutely agree with my opponent. He is completely and utterly right. The fundamental issue is not that financial aid is inadequate, but that tuition amounts to nearly $60,000 dollars a year and continues to rise. The real solution is, of course, free education. This ought to be the top priority of student activists working for social change. There is thus only one point I would like to make.
Brown is run by a corporation. We are talking about a bunch of CEOs in suits who shut themselves up in University Hall for a couple of hours about three times a year, make their decisions with zero-transparency and minimum student input and return to the skyscrapers and yachts where they belong. The Brown Corporation is not going to come together this December and say, "We were thinking, and education really is a right, not a debt. Let's not have tuition this year!"
They won't do it next year either, or the year after, or ever. This is why, when asked whether financial aid should be the University's top priority, my answer is still an emphatic yes. It should not be my top priority - it should not be the top priority of any student who at 20 is already shouldering a debt completely unheard of in most parts of the world. We need a revolution in education, not a pity reform from the top. But the University, our beautiful, private, for-profit University, does need to make financial aid its top priority.
I don't believe the institution of the corporate university can change fundamentally from the inside; besides, I am not sure where Hudson thinks the impetus for this change will occur. Great external pressure will have to be exerted for that kind of change to happen. However, as a scholarship student, I know I need this charity. I might deserve more, a tax-paying American who could not study for free in another country certainly deserves more, but the crumbs do a great deal. They taste funny, they are more McDonald's than Whole Foods, but people are hungry, and money makes a difference.
