By Jennifer Flores
As of recently, students may have come across some flyers encouraging students to join a student-led movement petitioning to help freeze tuition. This initiative was started by the L.I.T. (Locked in Tuition) Team, originating in English 335: Writing as Social Action.
Professor Christine Wilson, instructor of ENGL 335, emphasized that all mini-campaigns were entirely student driven and ultimately chose their own campus policy, practice or initiative.
“The course is well aligned with our mission to create a more just and humane word; in the end, these past 16 weeks have fundamentally been about leadership development. Writing assignments are purposefully designed to draw on students’ personal experience and empower them to find, hone, and loudly project their unique God-given voices” Wilson stated.
The L.I.T. team, that includes Elizabeth Hurduc, Katarzyna Zawislak, Lorena Murguia, Sabrina Glosson, and Lizbeth Lopez decided to go a route that has been an ongoing concern for many students at Dominican.
With passion to address tuition concerns, they created the survey with the goal of reaching 100 responses and presenting the survey data to Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Mark Titzer.
“Initially, we were hopeful for about 400 responses, or about a 100 from each class,” Zawislak said. “However, as we realized that we would only have 1.5 weeks to collect responses, we began to aim for 100 total responses to be more realistic,” Zawislak said.
In the end, they received 243 responses, double of what they had anticipated.
Glosson, a sophomore English major, expressed that they were able to discuss the survey results with Titzer, where he listened to their thoughts respectfully.
“He even mentioned our initiative during a faculty university assembly before we had even met with him,” she said.
Through their meeting, they learned how Dominican’s finances work and why Dominican has been hesitant to implement frozen tuition.
“What it comes down to is that frozen tuition is possible to implement, but very risky,” Glosson said. “Dominican runs on a tuition driven model, which means that the majority of DU’s revenue comes from student’s tuitions.”
Glosson expresses lack of state and philanthropic funding; would ultimately result in higher tuition cost.
“Currently there are no plans to freeze tuition, but hopefully our project will continue to grow and advocate for better financial transparency at Dominican in the future” she said.
Despite, Dominican’s decision to not freeze tuition as of now, Lopez stated that is has at least opened a conversation with the institution. She acknowledged the risks involved but continues to push students to speak on the issues.
“Our initiative depends on the support from students, and while there is interest, there’s still a lot more work to do,’ she said. “In the future, we hope to keep working with administrators to push for more transparency and affordable, realistic solutions.”
Zawislak, a senior psychology and criminology major, credits sophomore Nursing major, Hurduc, for coming up with the idea; the rest following suit as they all had their own concerns regarding the rise of tuition.
“When I first started at Dominican, I wasn’t necessarily concerned about raises in tuition because I wasn’t aware of how much tuition can increase.” Zawislak said. “I thought it would raise by a little bit every year, but seeing the tuition go up by thousands of dollars since I started attending Dominican, has led me to worry about my ability to both stay here as well as continue my education after graduation.”
Lopez, a junior biochemistry major, also expressed concerns about what future students will be faced with.
“Now that tuition is increasing to over $20,000+ every semester, I worry about how much tuition can increase before it reaches a tipping point” she said.
Murguia, a senior English major, mentioned that as she watches her undergraduate classmates begin or approach the end of their bachelor’s degrees, she sees how tuition increase impacts students.
“Over the past four years, several of my friends have had to leave Dominican primarily because they could no longer afford the rising costs” she said.
She also noted Dominican’s statement released in the Fall 2022 Dominican Magazine.
“Dominican University continue[s] to carry out the sisters’ history of high-quality liberal arts education, relationship-centered support and the mission of educating the children of immigrants and first-generation college students.”
Murguia worries that as tuition rises, access to higher education will become limited.
“This contradicts our mission in serving first-generation students and children of immigrants” she said.
In learning that Dominican was able to once successfully freeze tuition during COVID, she is aware that the initiative is very much possible.
“I want students to know that there is real power behind their words and actions. If freezing tuition is something our student body is passionate about, we have the ability to advocate for change,” she said. “For it to happen again, someone has to be willing to “go first.” They must start conversations, build momentum, and work collaboratively with decision-makers on campus.”
They were able to gain further support after showcasing their project at the SI Expo, allowing to keep the conversation moving forward.
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