After reading Kate Duch’s Trustee Viewpoint last week, I started wondering what else, aside from Gannett’s relocation and Helen Newman’s revamping, is discussed at Trustee meetings. Logically, I searched online for meeting minutes from the recent Trustee Weekend — but couldn’t find anything. I soon learned that many Trustee meetings are private.

Why is this such a concern? Because the Board of Trustees is an integral part of who decides Cornell’s tuition. And tuition is not just important in determining who Cornell appeals to based on their socioeconomic status, but it’s also crucial when thinking about the cost of our Ivy League education. Price: $45,971 for the private colleges and $34,600 for statutory; cost: enormous debt and immeasurable loss of opportunities post-undergrad education.

When thinking about Cornell, the buzz word “diversity” comes to mind. The administration puts a major emphasis on having a diverse student body; sometimes this effort works much better than other times (those of us in the Classes of 2008 and 2009 can hopefully look back at the Diversity Arches with a chuckle). Another important facet of Cornell’s diversity lies in its pledge to academic diversity — any person can receive instruction in any study, right? But with astronomical financial debts to Cornell post-graduation, we find our opportunities at that point drastically limited.

Many undergrads spend four years studying what they want to (in theory) and then have to work at least four more to pay Cornell back. Students who really wish to be pursuing a certain field may feel forced to take another job based on financial debt and half-heartedly enter the cubicle world. If I only had a quarter for every time someone came up to me and said, “I really wanted to be an English major, but there’s no money in that” or “I would love to do Teach for America, but I can’t afford to.”

Thus, social justice careers (as termed by the School of Industrial and Labor Relations’ Social Justice Fair, not an arbitrary coinage) are relegated to the upper echelon of society where people have enough money to afford not to work in high-paying jobs. In the societal microcosm that is Cornell, it’s mostly the middle class, which has too much money to qualify for a major grant and too little money not to need financial aid, that is penalized.

In last Friday’s Sun, Student Assembly President Elan Greenberg ’08 said that the student body has enormous potential to effect change for capping tuition: “If 10,000 students took two hours to protest the astronomical rise in Cornell tuition, imagine the effects this could have on University decision making.” I choose the Board of Trustees to focus on, and Duch’s column as a launchpad for that discussion, because as of right now, the only information that the public has about Trustee decisions leaks through in sporadic press releases and a bi-monthly column. I’ve had too many conversations just in the past week with people for whom financial woes are serious factors in their post-graduation jobs to believe that students are apathetic about this issue. Instead, I believe that the student body doesn’t realize it has any ability to effect bottom-up change on this matter.

When I first came to Cornell, I didn’t realize that the institution I was attending is really a corporation. When typing in “tuition rise” on cornell.edu, the rationale that keeps coming up is ensuring that Cornell is “competitive.” “The increases will keep Cornell competitive with the university’s peer institutions” (Cornell Chronicle, Jan. 29, 2007), as well as commodifying academic knowledge: “as knowledge expands, the value of that product also expands” (comment on The Chronicle’s website, Nov. 6, 2006).

At Commencement last year, President Skorton spoke about our responsibilities as Cornell students to go out and help the world. If Cornell really is a place to connect us with the rest of society, then we should be able to make decisions about our lives without the fear of our interest rates accruing. If Cornell wants to be competitive, how about being competitive by giving students the most diverse, least economically-driven opportunities after college? I personally care a whole lot more about going to a school where I know that my education, my unquantifiable knowledge — and everyone else’s — can lead to a whole array of diverse careers, instead of having five new treadmills to exercise on.

One of the goals of the Capital Campaign is to raise money to convert more loans into grants. I implore the student body to help push this into a major goal, while realizing that it is still a temporary solution to the problem of rising tuition. More grants mean less students having to deal with exorbitant loans post-college, but these grants do not compensate for a cross-campus rise in tuition. Nevertheless, I urge the Board of Trustees to refocus its recruiting efforts on garnering new alumni-donated grants, rather than towards new, unnecessary construction projects. Cornell will still attract students regardless of whether it has a revamped Helen Newman or not. But the Cornell that I dream of is really an alma mater — a “nurturing mother.” This Cornell puts its major focus on making sure that its students have the freedom to pursue any sort of job post-graduation, instead of being severely restricted by Big Red Financial Tape. This Cornell will fight the hypocrisy of advocating the importance of public sector jobs— but only for those who can afford it. Oh — and the Cornell that I dream of makes accessible to the public the record of important Trustee decisions:

Tuition rising,

I’m just surmising.

Ariela Rutkin-Becker is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be contacted at arbecker@cornellsun.com. Dude, Where’s My Karma?­ appears alternate Tuesdays.