Cabriniwelcomesbackstudentswithanopenwallet

Back in May of this year I was in pretty good spirits. I was finishing up my classes, arranging to get an easy summer job, packing up my stuff and just looking forward to a nice long three months of slacking off, catching some movies and working on my tan.

Now, in a span of what seems like five minutes, it is September again. I'm still stressed out, my skin is still a glow-in-the~dark shade of white and now, to top it all off, I'm a lot poorer than I was at the beginning of the summer.

Basically, my complete lack of funds comes from our brand new tuition increase, of which I was notified by way of a letter sent to my house (after I registered for classes, by the way).

In it, Cabrini president Antoinette Iadarola states that in order to provide me "with a competitive education that is second to none," Cabrini is, once again, raising tuition. Now I have to pay $13,900 per year just to learn here, plus an additional $6,900 to live here.

Dr. Iadarola says in her letter that "our tuition is the lowest in comparison to our direct competitors," such as St. Joseph's University, LaSalle and Villanova.

Now, I'm not claiming to be the brightest star in the sky or anything, but the last time I checked, those schools were universities. They all have enrollments of around 50 million students apiece, which seems to contrast with our enrollment of 5 undergraduates and 2 graduates. In addition, Iadarola fails to mention that even though our tuition is lower than most schools, our room and board is the second highest in Pennsylvania. I recently attended a meeting in which Dr. Iadarola pointed out several factors that made me wonder why tuition was raised.

First of all, this year's incoming class of first-year students is the highest ever in the school's 40-some year history. With all of these students coming in, wouldn't the income of the school in terms of tuition already have been raised dramatically with the old tuition amount?

The total resident student enroll- come to fund these projects. The projects, according to the letter from President Iadarola, include outfitting "each residential facility on campus with computer conduits that will provide access to the local area network and the Internet," beginning Phase II renovations to Founder's Hall, continuing the "technological enhancements to our classrooms," and the construction of another residence hall. ment for the 1998-99 school year is 620. Each of those students is paying $20,800 for both tuition and room and board. That brings the total income-from resident students only-to $12,896,000.

If you figure faculty and staff salaries for the year into the equation, with each of the 200 or so receiving an average salary of $40,000, the college spends another $8 million from its income.

That means that we have well over $10 million left over.

In addition, Cabrini's income from its endowments is almost one million dollars. We were recently awarded a $200,000grant from the Kresge foundation. Our budget is balanced. We received one million dollars from the Sepche group, in which we participate with several other area colleges, and another $2 million grant on top of that.

That brings Cabrini's total income for the year to almost $17 million, which does not even include the tuition coming in from commuters and graduate students.

When you do add in the money that graduates and commuters pay to go here (over $9 million), the total soars to about $26 million.

Cabrini has developed a fiveyear plan to fund its projects, such as the renovation of existing facilities.

The total outlook for this plan is between $35 and $40 million, which means that about $7 to $8 million will be spent from this year's in-

I have two points to make. The first is that the tuition increase was and is totally unnecessary. Had the tuition not been raised, we probably would have still had several million dollars left over.

Second, I simply want to know what this excess money will be used for. Are we still paying for the Dixon Center or the apartment complex? If so, those projects should have been funded well before the construction even began, much less six months after they were finished.

Are we paying so that Cabrini will be able to attract more students to its campus and further its reputation as a "regional college?"

Or will the money be used for other projects on campus (hel-lo, additional parking spaces)?

Maybe I'm mistaken. I'll admit that math is not my strongest subject But if my numbers are wrong, I'd like to have someone tell me that. An answer from the administration would be nice.

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