What better way is there to show how your college measures itself "by whom it includes and how they succeed" than to openly tell students concerned with the price of admission to leave?
That’s what it seems Mark Jacobs, the vice provost and dean of Barrett, the Honors College, implied when The State Press reported him saying, "Remember, Barrett is something that you elect to do. That’s one of the things I couldn’t understand. For some of the students, I think if it was such an irritating thing, they shouldn’t have elected to do it or they should elect not to do it."
Maybe this was a misstep made under the stress of a confrontational meeting.
Maybe that meeting brought back painful memories of how Barrett's fee proposal was rejected in 2005 and actually implemented in 2006 with a half-rate for current students that is nowhere in this proposal.
However, I hope Jacobs has learned his lesson. At least he opened his last forum on the Downtown Phoenix Campus with his apology that the transparency of the fee increase came too late.
But even here, his suggestion that "everybody was okay" with the 2015 fee increase is another feat of selective memory.
Four years ago, I was among the Undergraduate Student Government Downtown senators who first learned of the Barrett fee proposal when ASU announced its tuition and fee plan a few weeks before the only mandated forum hosted by the Arizona Board of Regents.
Back then, as appears to be the case today, the Barrett Honors College Council, with its one, unknown representative from the Downtown Phoenix Campus, recommended a fee increase without tipping off student government senators or the broader community.
Back then, as now, a series of town halls came after the announcement to promote the fee increase, largely for the same reason that is being promoted today as a way to support the extra students Barrett added starting in 2015.
Then, as likely now, student government officials debated whether they should oppose a fee that was not communicated to them until it was too late to come up with any alternative except to take the financial burden or leave it and face an unknown, often described as apocalyptic future.
And I get it, fee increases are rarely popular. But how do you expect students to support adding to their financial hardships by treating your students to at-best tokenistic “forums” that are designed to defend a decision you have likely been planning for months if not years?
Students at ASU are not that stupid, and I would hate to turn away the very people that make Barrett "the gold standard" of honors colleges with such treatment.
If you treat them as opponents, I would expect their student governments to act that way before the Board of Regents. If you treat them as true partners, then maybe they would even happily invest in this great program that both you and they clearly cherish.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this letter to the editor are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors. This letter to the editor was submitted by ASU alumnus Ryan Boyd, who graduated in 2017 with a Bachelor's of Science in Public Service & Public Policy. Boyd was a previous opinion columnist for The State Press.
Reach the author at RyanAndrewBoyd1@gmail.com.
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