Gutelle: NU's high-price projects are not worth the splurge

The report from a recent article in Forbes Magazine that labeled Northwestern the 9th most expensive college in the country barely seemed to cause any sort of disturbance among the majority of the student body. "Oh, sure," seems to be the general consensus, "going to school here is ludicrously expensive. Why is this news again?" The phenomenon of privatized, highly expensive universities has become so matter of fact that it is accepted without much scrupulousness. The necessity of paying an arm and a leg to attend a school like NU is justified by the school's brand, by seeing a job interviewer's face light up as he notices those 12 prestigious letters near the top of a potential employee's resume.

I'm not the kind of person to denigrate this benefit, but when NU is declared this expensive—more expensive than Stanford, than Duke, than every single Ivy except for Columbia—it makes me wonder if we've been using the law of large numbers to justify a slightly inflated spending trend.

Every once in a while, a new student movement will start to snowball through Facebook. "New Student Center Initiative" or "U-Passes Are Vital For My Northwestern Happiness" temporarily becomes a rallying cry before the obvious point is raised: All of these changes would require a substantial hike in tuition, a fact that often scares students away. And yet, when all is said and done, would we even notice? Would an extra thousand on top of those dozens and dozens of thousands really be enough to make us notice, to make us say enough is enough? Of course not. Thousands of high schoolers would still apply, simply because the Northwestern name is the Northwestern name.

I don't mean to say that we should execute all of these costly-but-beneficial initiatives all at once. But it doesn't feel right that they've all stalled when other projects have gotten the green light. One particular project comes to mind. I call it "the road." You've no doubt seen this massive construction project, which has left mounds of dirt and sectioned off pathways in the area around Kellogg and Swift. It is purportedly to increase accessibility for safety vehicles, and yet they never seemed to have a problem reaching these buildings in the past. The road also claims to decrease traffic and pollution, neither of which seem to be that much of a threat on our pedestrian-friendly campus. Why has our university chosen this project, out of all the ways to spend our money? If given a choice between this new road and the foundations of a new student center, would any student — the main source of income for the university — really prefer the former?

Obviously, the Forbes list is questionable. It doesn't take into account financial aid and weighs heavily the cost of living in the Chicago suburbs. But I took all of those things into consideration when I chose NU, and the University has responded by using my decision to fund projects not related to me. It is my hope that my fellow students also believe the high NU expenses mean something more than just the price of a highly regarded liberal arts school. They mean that we as students have put a huge investment into our education, and maybe it's time we let the university know that they could be doing more to put an investment in us.

Sam Gutelle is a Weinberg senior.

He can be reached at Samuelgutelle@gmail.com.