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by rkischuk 5410 days ago
It's true that it's not just the administrators. It's the budgets and programs that come with them.

I went to Georgia Tech. The last time I heard a report, Georgia Tech had 3 staff members dedicated to the fraternity system. 1 for fraternities, 1 for sororities, and one for minority organizations that don't want to be in the mainstream system. Schools should have zero staff dedicated to the "greek" system. Greek letter organizations are free associations of citizens that operate on the periphery of the school. But we need staff. And we need budget and fees to pay to educate this system, and monitor them.

Expand this to every corner of campus. You not only need many staff dedicated to diversity programs, you must take "fees" from students to pay for diversity days, weeks, and months. I served in Georgia Tech's student government, and watched every week as student organizations came through asking for money to pay for bands, t-shirts, refreshments, banners, etc, all from student funds. Many of the projects were nice ideas, few of them justified boosting the cost of education for a school's students.

At most schools, there are multiple staff members dedicated to purposes for which there should be zero staff. But some combination of social agendas and lawsuit avoidance builds up the headcount.

Students pay for access to sporting events, which used to be about actual students competing, but are now huge cash cows that serve as farm leagues for pro sports teams. Students now pay hundreds of dollars in fees for the _chance_ to see their school's sporting events, even though stadium capacities are often triple or more the student population.

1 comments

I don't know if there are many schools like this, but the Greek houses at Northwestern are all on campus property. As I understand it, the frats do not pay rent, but members still pay rent which the frat then keeps. So my on-campus living cost per year is $8k, and theirs is essentially $0. I love seeing my money go to things that have no relation to me.
This must be unique to Northwestern. The housing prices at other universities is listed on the residential housing page. Greek housing was no different than anyone else and were a little more since the houses weren't as dense as a tower block.

The only way I can see the Greeks at Northwestern getting away with this is if they covered all the maintenance and all the utility charges. Considering that most of those houses are old and paid for NU wouldn't have to charge anything beyond that.

I believe that's the case, and that they actually have to pay for ADA upgrades on some buildings if they haven't already. It's still the same kind of housing that other students pay for.