UMass is WILDIN’
I received word of UMass Boston’s latest update on our payment plans: meal plans, parking passes, and MBTA passes will be refunded in different ways (MBTA pass being refunded for April and May, and meal plans and parking passes are refunded from last week until the end of the semester). Room and board is still being decided because the building is privately owned and the costs are decided by the private owner. Payment plans are extended to another month, so basically students paying out of pocket have another month.... to do nothing because our quarantine was extended until the end of April.... so what is another month really doing for us?
what’s worse is that the university is still considering our glitchy, overloaded, and unmotivating courses on Zoom and Blackboard Collaborate as “regular courses taught remotely”, not online courses. So our prices will not be lowered at this time.
i have sent a letter to our chancellor Katherine Newman expressing my disappointment at the university to basically ignore the most prominent demands of students and essentially place another month of unemployed income (on average, 50% of our regular income) to the students to pay 1,300 a month (not including health insurance, and other monetary expenses) despite the conditions showing everything but normality.
just because we have lost this battle does not mean the war is over. There is still another month left to get our prices down to a humane amount that reflects our current community’s state. Keep sharing this petition and keep signing!
here is the email I sent to Chancellor Newman this afternoon:
Chancellor Newman,
I am very disappointed in the decision the university has made so close to the deadline for many students to pay for their tuition and room and board. You do realize that extending a month in between payments is going to do absolutely nothing to benefit the students, except give them more time to wonder where they are going to get their money, right? We are not heirs/heiresses where we can just beg our parents for money to pay for university when our parents are part of the unemployment scale and have other dues they’re accountable for as well. What baffles me even more is that room and board is STILL not addressed and students have been in remote conditions for almost 3 weeks. I have only received automated answers like “we are doing everything we can” “this is a new situation” What are you guys doing that is taking so long to be on the right side of justice? Aren’t you “for the people”? Don’t you care about the students and the community? The university needs to understand one thing: DUE TO COVID-19, I cannot pay my tuition for this university at the price that it is now. I am followed by almost 200 people in this petition as well who agree that our costs need to be relieved or reduced.
I’ve heard numerous arguments that the universities are concerned with their staff’s paychecks, and now I ask you: where was that concern when you made the approval to utilize our money that we give you to construct UHall in 2016, with its fancy cafe, vending machines, and larger bathrooms? Where was that concern when you made the approval to construct dormitories for Fall 2018? Renovating the library and the Quinn Building over the summer with construction? Adding a Dunkin’ Donuts to Campus Center, with automatic water fillers on every floor and cellphone chargers as well? Busting the parking rate up to 15$ a week for staff and students, and then adding an MBTA pass subsidy to everyone’s bills so that we can pay for your dues that are not even going toward us?
A standard college dorm building, on average, according to RSMeans square footage chart, would cost you $4.4 mil to build a 2-3 story dorm (312 students domestically could have their charges covered for this price). The average building (like UHall) costs between 140-217 dollars per sqfootage in most big cities in different states, again according to RSMeans square footage chart (Im more than happy to send you where I got this information). If we average that to $180 and multiply that by 190,000 (rough sq footage of UHall), we get 34.2 million dollars (just shy of 2,426 students domestically could have had their costs covered with this price). Renovating a building for commercial purposes (like UMB, because the library and Quinn are not residential) cost roughly $50-$150 per square foot (Richard Grob Architects “ballparks” these traditional costs for consumers to evaluate if they have the funds for these). While the dimensions are uncertain for Healey, as I cannot find any even on UMass Archives, Healey is a relatively large library (11 floors, classrooms, and wide space), so any “average” dimensions for a medium library would be ball parking too low. For renovations to Quinn respectively, 97,023 square feet (according to UMB archives, not easy to find by the way). If we average renovations to $100/square feet so we stay in the middle, multiplying this by Quinn’s square footage makes your total $9,202,300 (just under 653 domestic students could have had their costs covered). For the record, I am estimating the in state tuition to be 14,100 a year, as this is the most up to date information I have on in state tuition for spring 2020. Furthermore, this mathematics is not including the costs of automatic water bubblers, Dunkin Donuts’ rent, the rent of most of these buildings, does not include the cost of the telephone charger stations, and the cost to rent out the Starbucks in the Healey Library, the cost to insert these dining areas to the campus, or the Ins and outs of these dining areas (employment, equipment, food wastage, etc) I will copy and paste all of my sources, so you can have this information on file.
Chancellor Newman, I am not settling for hidden agenda and hidden funds determining where my funds are going. I am also not settling for “middle-of-the-road” approaches to our funds that are paying for these buildings and not going toward us. I am not settling for having one more month of unemployment to still be charged the same prices that reflect “normal working conditions”. I could also make the argument that college costs are racist and classist, to exclude lower income families (predominantly students of color) and undocumented, or otherwise federally excluded by the government for any sort of aid. These are not the current conditions of our university and I am very shamed to have my tuition still going towards a university who could not care less about our needs. I will not stop fighting for this, and if you have any questions, my inbox is 100% open.
As promised here are my sources:
costs of uhall: https://www.bdcnetwork.com/campus-costs-square-foot-construction-prices-student-unions
domestic student tuition source: https://www.umb.edu/editor_uploads/images/bursar/Spring_2020_Undergraduate_Tuition_and_Fees.pdf
Quinn dimensions: https://openarchives.umb.edu/digital/collection/p15774coll22/id/67/ "The Robert H. Quinn Administration Building was completed in
1973 as part of the original construction of the Harbor Campus. Designed by Goody, Clancy & Associates, Inc. , it contains 97,023 gross square feet of office and service space" (Knapp, David, President of UMB)
costs of renovations: http://www.richardgroharchitects.com/calculators/
costs of dorms: https://www.rsmeans.com/model-pages/college-dormitory-2-3-story.aspx
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Best,Luan Minitti
Sent from my iPhone