Stanford has eliminated tuition payments for students from families whose income is below $45,000. Whether this will be accompanied by a concurrent commitment to admit students from poor and working class families remains to be seen, but the elimination of loan debt for those folks who are in this category is a huge deal, and this is a development that administrators at universities which have been loathe to make significant inroads into financial aid reform should heed. At NYU, John Sexton gets in shouting matches with undergrads for daring to question yearly tuition increases and anemic financial aid packages, and serious reforms are necessary and long overdue. At Yale, incremental change began last year only when undergraduates organized a mass movement and occupied the admissions office during decision crunch time, but reform were linked primarily to family contributions and failed to address the very tangible inequalities in forcing some students to financially contribute to their education while others recieved a free ride through the largesse of wealthy parents etc. Both of these universities, and so many others, need to view the Stanford announcement, as a sign that times are changing, and need to recognize that students at many campuses, folks like TRAC at NYU and the Undergraduate Organizing Committee at Yale, are going to fight hard, I hope, to make universities affordable and accessible for working-class students.