financial aid redux

The Villager reports on TRAC's efforts at NYU.

Shtull-Trauring disagrees about the university’s transparency. Rather than
the comprehensive financial breakdown he had hoped to see at the meeting, he
says students were shown general pie charts that did not illustrate how their
tuition dollars were being spent. “It’s ironic considering that the president
started off speaking about how in contemporary conversation there is a tendency
toward simplification instead of high-level discourse….and then [he] uses
rhetoric instead of facts in his discourse with the students,” said
Shtull-Trauring.
In addition to the pie charts, Shtull-Trauring said Sexton
was disingenuous in the figures he cited verbally: “He was throwing out numbers
that at the time we had no way to verify but later when we looked at them, we
realized they were far from accurate. It was very patronizing.”
TRAC is
working on a response to Sexton’s statements while also “generally stepping up
our efforts,” as Shtull-Trauring put it. The organization already has the
backing of 32 student groups, making it one of the broadest coalitions ever
formed at N.Y.U.
At the town hall one administrator reportedly remarked that
such campaigns die out when students graduate. Shtull-Trauring said they told
her, “ ‘We’re in it for the long run, and we’re not going to give up.’”