As journalism majors most of us rarely have to deal with numbers unless it’s directly related to the statistics and scores that we report in our stories. We deal with numbers from the perimeter and don’t really have to get our hands dirty in the minute details that plague those poor souls who dare to take on the calculus and trigonometry monsters. The few times we deal with numbers outside school are related to what we do to survive, how much money we pay for our morning coffee, our monthly rent and phone bills and of course the eternally-growing tuition that inevitably will end up in Michael Crow’s pocket at the end of the day.

   The university has recently incurred a little fine, and by “little,” I mean $87,000. The fine is for violations that the university made during the month of August when renovating the MU though not much more is said online than just that. As one of the many that feeds the tuition monster, I have to wonder, how much is this going to increase our tuition for next semester? Or will this come out of other pockets? And when oh when will the university just give us a straight answr on where our tuition dollars are spent?

   So many conflicting answers have been given to these questions that those “little numbers” are suddenly a lot more daunting that we initially anticipated. For example, the $53 million spent on the MU renovation after the November fire, and where exactly did that money come from? No article I could find actually specified. Now, I’m not taking a stab at journalistic efforts, I believe that these reporters put a lot of work into finding out where the money came from, I’m pointing the finger at the university. As a reporter who has spent a considerable amount of time trying to find out from where the money is generated for projects, I know how close-lipped the university can be about giving out that information and how frustrating it can be to try to dig up the facts when the university doesn’t want to cooperate.

   Let’s also add up the costs incurred from the renovations: an additional $87,000 fine tacked onto the end of the project. While small in comparision to the initial $54 million, $87,000 is nothing to sneeze at. I don’t know about any of you, but I for one do not have that kind of money hidden in a peanut-butter jar in a cabinet. Where will that money come from? One guess on what my theory is.

   Let’s also not forget that our good ole’ university president is paid upwards of $720,000 a year, not to mention an additional $600,000 bonus from private funds if he stays until his contract is up and $150,000 is he meets his ten performance goals this year, according to a report last year by Fox 11. He is said to be in the top twenty for highest paid public university presidents.

   Now I’m not saying that it is inexpensive to run a university that educates around 65-70,000 students on a total of four campuses, but for tutition to be as high as it is, it seems as though the university might be pulling in way, way, WAY more money than is necessary to actually run the campuses. Suddenly, the superfluous construction and renovation as well as our favorite president’s enormous salary start to make sense. Maybe the numbers aren’t beyond our comprehension but the reasons behind them surely are to me. Maybe if Crow wasn’t so concerned with getting his name in all the papers with his “New American University” philosophy and all the new toys for the downtown campus, he might put some of that money to a better use, like for instance: scholarships, lower textbook costs, new elevators for the dorms in which students frequently get stuck (I was stuck in one myself for about 15 minutes), new plumbing and mold inspections in other dorms, updating computers at the old campuses, etc. I could go on forever. Enrollment is going up and so is tuition, if the university is getting that much more money from that many more students. then why oh why doesn’t the university use the money to fix the things that need to be fixed instead of pumping the tuition of a man who won’t even comment on stories such as these?