Where's my Financial Aid Initiative?

I realize that the hot-button issue on campus is usually something like Tailgate, but can we shift the administration's focus away from that and think about the outrageous privilege and economic disparity at this university? And can we focus on it for more than two seconds?

Despite the Financial Aid Office's grand proclamations of new aid initiatives, all I've seen is a tuition increase, loans up to my face, working 15 to 20 hours a week at my work-study job so I can afford the ridiculous textbook and food prices, and my parents using up all their piddly incomes and sacrificing their home and future. And I know I'm not alone. According to statistics recently published in The Chronicle, the average Duke family makes more than $200,000 per year, which makes students like me-aka the students bringing down the average for all the CEO children here, students who are in the blurry middle class out in the real world but live in third-class stowage on the Titanic that is life here at Duke-the lower extreme. Which apparently makes us easy to write off and marginalize. As if it's not difficult enough to make it in to this school and survive here with a sorry public school education and having to work part-time since we were old enough to lie about our ages to avoid child labor laws (just kidding... no, I'm not.)

Now we are trapped here by Bursar bills, paying for the prestigious Duke name on our degrees with our blood and tears. It's definitely worth it; I know many students like me (especially women of color) are some of the first in our family to make it to a school like this. But I refuse to stay silent in the face of all the wealth and privilege here, in the face of all the help kind-hearted Duke University says they are giving to underprivileged students. I feel betrayed by this institution. I feel outraged. We should all be outraged, even if you are the wealthiest person here, because this kind of disgusting disparity is what bars capable people from education and the hope of a future. So stand up! Protest to the financial aid office and President Richard Brodhead.

Open your eyes and see what a struggle a school like this is for even the average American. Don't ignore us.

Nicole Diaz Nelson

Trinity '09