Dear President Simmons,
As a future alum of this prestigious university, I am concerned that my hypothetical endowment will not get, if you will, the most bang for its buck. So I write you today with a modest proposal.
You'll have to double-check my numbers, but if my napkin-back calculations are correct, I've discovered a way for the University to save $3.2 million a year, effective as soon as this coming fall.
As you are no doubt aware, the average financial aid package for members of the Class of 2007 was $26,630. This is certainly a worthwhile expenditure, but it's also an expensive one - financial aid cost the University $38 million for the incoming class of 2007 alone.
Imagine this, though. For the class of 2009, we hold a lottery in which the names of 120 incoming students are randomly drawn, and those 120 students are summarily denied financial aid for their entire stay at Brown. That way, Brown can have a cool $3.2 million to spend elsewhere, while still meeting the financial needs of 92 percent of the incoming class!
Does this sound callous? Too great a sacrifice to make?
Well, Brown is already doing it.
In September, the 112 were transfer students, and the other eight were part of the Resumed Undergraduate Education program. These students and the hundreds of others who matriculated in previous years are an integral part of the Brown community. They serve as teaching assistants and work campus jobs, start clubs and join Greek life, organize events and write for The Herald. In short, they contribute to and are as much a part of campus life as anyone who arrived as a first-year.
And yet, financially, they are treated as second-class students on this entirely arbitrary basis.
In response to the untold number of complaints received from transfer and RUE students, the University has come up with nothing but excuses. The simple fact, however, is that this denial of desperately needed aid is indefensible.
Here is a simple solution, and one that doesn't deny aid to any students who need it: Next year, put us on the books as '09ers. Please. Just pretend that we're incoming first-years, and pocket the difference when we mysteriously graduate a year or two early.
If those 120 students who were robbed of aid this fall had been pooled with the first-years, the average award would have decreased only $2,000.
I realize that $2,000 can make a lot of difference to those incoming first-years who are in need. Believe me, though: $24,600 could make a much bigger difference to transfer and RUE students who are every bit as needy.
But even that calculation assumes a static financial aid allotment. Brown, however, meets the needs of all students who arrived here as first-years even when their circumstances change.
Often, I'm sure, the University increases the award to students who most need it and likewise decreases the award to students who are no longer so needy. And this is not even to mention aid recipients who drop out, take time off or transfer to another institution.
In short, while the University's budget may be finite, the amount of financial aid awarded to individual students is quite fluid. Again and again, however, transfers are told that it just doesn't work that way, that the system doesn't account for them.
That's a pretty poor excuse. Any system that arbitrarily ignores a group of students is a flawed one. I would hope that the dire financial straits of hundreds students would be sufficient impetus for the University to shake things up.
Sadly, this does not seem to be the case. It is a shame that those students who changed their lives or their college experiences just to come to Brown are the most ignored when the University balances is books.
We came here because we love this school. And - all joking aside - we do hope to generously donate after graduation.
Unfortunately, there will be a pesky $100,000 debt to take care of first.
Donald Tetto '06 transferred to Brown.
