I was disheartened to see the article "A right price for Tufts dorms" in the Tufts Daily on Wednesday, Oct. 11. While Dean Reitman's sentiments reassure me that Tufts probably will not establish a new, tier-priced system in the near future, the attitude of some students is slightly alarming.
Over the course of my Tufts experience, I have run the gamut of housing: Miller, Haskell, abroad, and now Sophia Gordon Hall. Even while abroad living with host families, I experienced the bad and the good. I have also heard a wide range of discussions on how we should change our housing lottery system, including this idea of pricing dorms differently. Personally, I think this would be a terrible idea that would severely affect Tufts' culture.
Imagine coming to Tufts your
freshman year, and based on the amount your family could pay, you are assigned housing. The children of the privileged take over Sophia Gordon, and the poor souls whose parents do not have such lucrative professions are sentenced to four years in the "dungeons" of Haskell and Wren.
Your freshman hall, rather than being the delightfully bizarre cast of characters we have all come to know and love, would lack diversity and be full of people with backgrounds very similar to yours. Not only would this segregate the school along financial lines, but it would also create an elitist culture among the wealthy and break down the morale of those who work just as hard, but whose finances hold them back.
Every one of us who goes to Tufts got in on our own merit. We all have an equal right to take advantage of all the opportunities Tufts has to offer, regardless of our socioeconomic status. Approximately 50 percent of the students at this school receive some form of financial aid; that does not make one-half of the school more worthy of anything than the other.
In fact, college is a chance for all of us to escape the constraints of our backgrounds and form a reputation on what we do, not what we have. It would be a shame to give students financial aid and then treat them as second-rate citizens by dismissing them to the "bad" dorms.
I agree that in the long term, Tufts should work on improving the dorms that need work. As an institution, we should not accept a gaping inequality in housing, and I think the administration is doing what it can to work on that, albeit at a slow pace.
If you would prefer having different price selections, you are welcome to look off-campus as an upperclassman. There are plenty of people who gladly pay for the convenient location of College Avenue and others are willing to schlep from Bowdoin Street so they can pay a more reasonable price. Personally, I am glad that Tufts housing is not like the Medford/Somerville rental market.
Please Tufts, let's not lose sight of fairness out of frustration from the housing lottery. The new three-year lottery system may not be the most desirable, but at least it is fair to each student.
Sure, you might be stuck in Haskell for a year, but hey, at least the bricks are quaint, and you just might end up in Sophia for senior year.
Meghan Fenzel is a senior double majoring in international relations and French.
