Posted 7:15 p.m. Feb. 28- The Board of Trustees approved a 4.5 increase in tuition and fees for next year Friday, bringing student bills to $29,072. Incoming students will pay $29,350, a 5.5 percent increase over last year.
“Everyone always worries about tuition increases,” University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg said after the meeting. “Nobody likes it, but it’s a necessary evil.”
Trachtenberg and other administrators presented GW’s priorities for next year’s budget to student leaders Thursday afternoon before Friday’s meeting with the trustees. Increases the administration proposed to the board, a governing body comprised of 37 members who approve University policy, included $13 million for financial aid, $350,000 for the Gelman Library collections and other costs and about $750,000 toward student life initiatives.
Vice President and Treasurer Louis Katz called the financial aid increase, which brings the total aid the University provides to almost $110 million, an “all-time high.”
Vice President for Academic Affairs Donald Lehman announced GW also plans to spend $650,000 on the Center for Academic Technologies and $350,000 on an academic plan that includes the addition of a new freshman writing course next year.
Academic priorities, which total $1.9 million, also include new funding for initiatives in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, Elliott School of International Affairs, School of Business and Public Management and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
This includes two new faculty positions each in the ESIA and SBPM, funds for increasing engineering school enrollment and raising graduate student teaching stipends in all schools to at least $15,000, Lehman said. He also announced two new living and learning communities proposed for the Mount Vernon campus.
The trustees will vote on the proposed budget in executive session tomorrow.
Junior Graham Murphy, president of the Out Crowd, presented the panel of administrators with a 1,000 student signatures on a petition to increase financial aid proportionately to tuition.
“Why would anyone in their right mind not sign that petition?” Trachtenberg said, drawing laughs from the vice presidents, deans and other campus officials at the table. “It’s a no brainer.”
He went on to explain the faculty and student demands and an intention to improve the University deem an annual increase necessary.
Administrators responded to student questions about next year’s budget, housing issues and the recent U.S. Court of Appeals decision to instate city zoning limits on GW.
The court order, which was handed down Feb. 4, requires the University to house 70 percent of undergraduate students, and all freshmen and sophomores, on campus or outside Foggy Bottom. The decision accelerates a GW search for more housing and also disallows the construction of any buildings that do not include at least 50 percent of space for housing.
“We’ve never disagreed about housing more students on campus,” said Robert Chernak, Senior Vice President for Student and Academic Support Services. “The issue is whether we can build the right types of projects … given time we can add the number of beds they are requiring.”
The University has until March 9 to appeal the decision to a full nine-member U.S. Court of Appeals instead of the three-judge panel that decided the case.
GW is arguing the federal case on Constitutional grounds of academic freedom, saying the city should not be involved in University planning. University lawyers are arguing a concurrent case in the D.C. appeals court on the grounds that telling students where to live violates the D.C. Human Rights Act.
“You could characterize this area as a ghetto, where an undesirable group of people called freshmen and sophomores have been herded,” Trachtenberg said, indicating the campus boundaries in a map of the Foggy Bottom area on a projection screen.
The court order disallows freshmen and sophomores from living in the Hall on Virginia Avenue and the Aston, as it discounts any buildings outside defined campus boundaries (which also includes Pennsylvania House and City Hall) from GW’s “on-campus” housing inventory.
The University is searching for housing in the District and possibly Virginia to accommodate the order, postponing the housing selection schedule. Meanwhile, Dean of Students Linda Donnels said GW will be looking for “nooks and crannies” to house students in its current facilities within the boundaries.
The court decision also curtails GW plans for a new business school, set for construction pending city permits, which could be delayed about a semester, Trachtenberg said.
University officials are “hesitant to dig until we are more sure we can come into compliance,” he said.
Trachtenberg explained the difference in increases for new and returning students.
“You’re here, you know tuition was going to go up,” he said, adding GW tries to accommodate the needs of its continuing students hit with yearly increases. “We have no understanding (the new students).”
Graduate and returning medical students will each see a 3 percent tuition increase while law students are facing a 5.3 percent increase.
-Mosheh Oinounou contributed to this report.
