By Kaitlin Thaney
I love Northeastern and all, don’t get me wrong here. The classes aren’t so bad, the people are great, for the most part, and I have to admit, I have a little bit of a crush on the city of Boston. But, as of late, there’s definitely been some things about this school that have made me a bit heated.
For starters, I don’t know if anyone else is planning on going on co-op in July (cue the co-op rant), but the school has pretty much admitted that we’re going to be screwed over.
“Oh, so, with this new ‘semester conversion’ that makes no sense since we’re eternally going to be on a messed up calendar, anyone who lives out of town may have to come back during their last ‘break’ of their lives to interview because we thought it was clever to end school in April,” co-op advisors alike told students within the last two weeks. OK, so I may have added some words to that, but you all know it would be a lot simpler if these “advisors” told us in the beginning what they really thought.
With the break from April to July, the likelihood that students may have to come back to interview in May is pretty high. Way to draw out the process, Northeastern. I was even classified as a “guinea pig” in this “bumpy” process.
I’m sorry, if I am going to be part of this “testing period,” can I be paid for it? At least the ads on the T say, “subjects in experiment will be rewarded” with a nice chunk of money. That’s what I feel like I’m in — an experiment.
I guess asking for any type of money in return for partaking, unwillingly, I might add, in this “experiment” of sorts is just being ludicrous right? Or should I say “ludacris”?
Don’t even get me started. Nah, strike that, I might as well share my aggravation in this rant.
Hike tuition in a school that already is breaking my pocketbook, fine. Switch to semesters because someone in the administration decided to pull a George Dubya (get bored and decide to toy with something that was perfectly set as it was), fine. Punish the entire Northeastern community for our drunk demographic and their behavior, stretching it but I can still understand the grounds for that; to a point, that is.
Now, Northeastern has taken it way too far this time. For a school that aspires getting into the Top 100 before my generation is obsolete, they have made, by far, the most moronic move that I have ever witnessed in my 19 years on this earth.
For those of you that picked up this paper without looking at the front page (impressive, I must say) apparently since drunken riots coming from the Patriots winning the Superbowl are directly tied to music, the main event that draws students to Springfest, is cancelled my friends.
I’ll let you scratch your head at that one for a while.
The powers that be, a.k.a. Freeland himself, has cancelled the Ludacris concert.
Why, you might ask?
Because “timing is everything in life,” according to letter to the community written by the man himself, released yesterday.
We’re being punished for riots that were all over Boston, but just so happened to be concentrated around Northeastern and ended up in a non-NU student killing a non-NU student. Not that I don’t think the riots weren’t out-of-control and resulted in a tragedy that stains this campus now, that’s not what I mean at all.
The entire student body is “paying the price” beyond just canceling a hip-hop concert.
Students voted to increase the student activity fee… to $100. And why? To bring larger acts for Springfest. What do we get? Years of planning thrown out and higher tuition.
You want to see riots? Way to go, NU, way to go.
Maybe I’m the only one that is on a tight budget, able to go to this school due to loans I’ll be paying off until I’m 40-something. Wait, no, I know for a fact that the majority of students aren’t paying their entire tuition in cold, hard cash without the slightest I.O.U.
So, make my debt a little bit deeper NU. It may not be thousands of dollars per student when you work out the math, but those couple hundreds of dollars could be nice to buy books or even groceries.
I, personally, don’t condone riots or anything like that, but in this case, I may make an exception.
I’m not even a die-hard Ludacris fan. I’m more upset at the principle here and thought put behind this decision, actually the lack-there-of.
Well thanks for punishing me, NU. Maybe we’ll resort to time-outs and taking away toys rather than any sort of judicial reprimanding. Better yet, let’s hike tuition to include not only thousands and thousands of dollars, but also my first born, grandmother and dog.
I better stop spouting ideas, the administration might get another brilliant one.
— Kaitlin Thaney can be reached at
