http://www.people.com/article/ansel-elgort-cold-water-pianist-casting
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Rickety ride: Elon students experience adventure in India
It was dark in Udaipur, India. Elon University senior Jack Halligan and junior Jordan Nulsen had adjusted to driving rickshaws in the northern part of India, but not here. In Udaipur, a taxi driver had to take the wheel because the roads were too narrow to fit two rickshaws. They’d nearly made it up a huge hill when they saw headlights from the other side. The taxi driver yanked the rickshaw into reverse and let the vehicle fly back down the hill, pressing on the horn as he went.
This portion of Team Elon Tuk Tuk dodged a head-on collision thanks to the generosity of a native. To the taxi driver, instances of road-chaos are utterly normal. To Will Stirn, Ben Donahue, Maria Castine, Halligan and Nulsen, India’s road rules were hard-learned. But that was the point.
The team of five embarked on a trip hosted by The Adventurists — an organization that seeks to “make the world less boring.” They participated in the Rickshaw Run over Winter Break and Winter Term and traveled approximately 1,800 miles on what the Adventurists call “glorified lawnmowers.”
The Rickshaw Run is one of six main “adventures” sponsored by The Adventurists. Its description is:
“At each end of the Run is a party of earth-shattering proportions, but what is between them is all down to you. And luck — good or bad. No set route, no back up, no way of knowing if you’re going to make it. The only certainty is that you will get lost, you will get stuck and you will break down. It’s just you and your mates in a wholly unsuitable vehicle traversing the subcontinent enduring whatever [stuff] the road throws at you.”
Stirn, the team’s architect, said there were a lot of close calls when it came to driving.
“Imagine biking across the quad on the bike paths and trying to go as fast as you can while everyone’s trying to get to class and also going the same pace as you,” he said. “You have no choice but to just go for it.”
Not only were the road rules virtually nonexistant in India, the rickshaws were guaranteed to break down, and vital driving mechanisms like traffic lights, at times, failed to work.
“There were a lot of intersections with traffic lights that weren’t working, and everyone just goes but somehow doesn’t get hit,” Halligan said. “It’s just a game of chicken. You have to maintain speed and direction so people can slow down for you, but if you slow down, it throws off the whole system.”
The “just go” mentality brought the group together in the first place.
“We’re just everyone that said yes to [Stirn],” Halligan said of the assembled team. “I’d like to think I was special, but I was just stupid enough to agree.”
This group of students said yes to a logistics overload in planning, fundraising more than $1,600 for charity and being fully enveloped in another country’s culture on rickshaws for 13 days. Despite this, the five went the full distance, asking questions and taking help when offered to ultimately cross the finish line.
With the trip approaching, the only thing to do was get there. Stirn spent the fall pouring over possible opportunities through Elon for financial aid, Nulsen sought out charities the team could raise money for, and the rest of the team assisted in whatever capacity they could leading up to the trip.
By the end of December, plans were finalized, and it was time to go. The students boarded separate planes to fly a whopping 36 hours to Jaisalmer, India, the starting line location.
They arrived Dec. 28, spent New Year’s Eve on a palace rooftop with adventurers from abroad and approached the starting line Jan. 1 for the start of the Rickshaw Run.
“Don’t die,” an Adventurist representative said in a British accent. “I have no other advice to give you.”
That was it for the checkered-flag speech — they were off. Team Tuk Tuk, divided into two rickshaws painted like Mystery Machines from “Scooby Doo,” began the first leg of the journey.
“We were bottleneck for 20 minutes adjusting to driving them,” Halligan said of the first few miles on rickshaws. “The goal for the first day was just to find somewhere to stay before dark.”
This task, although it seemed simple, proved to be one of the team’s biggest challenges.
“It started to get dark, and we were trying to find a hotel but couldn’t find anywhere that was open,” Halligan said. “We were getting scared because we’d already gone to four hotels and none were open. Me and [Stirn] basically had a standoff with the manager saying we were going to just stay because we had nowhere else to go. He finally caved in and gave us some mats to sleep on, on the floor.”
Struggles like these were uncommon. The team said the people of India were among the most generous they’ve met. However, the hotel search brought up situations unique to the culture that threw the team for a loop.
“That was a sketchy night because Jordan and Jack thought they found a hotel earlier that turned out to be a ‘love hotel’ for younger people” — Will Stirn.
Halligan joined in to continue the story.
“They’re like, ‘Are you two married?’ And we said, ‘No, we’re brother and sister.,’” he said. “They just gave us really weird looks and started laughing because they thought we were there to … you know. That was the start of our night.”
They learned from this experience that in that region of India, “Guest Houses” were in fact “Love Hotels,” which are under-the-rug places for teenagers to stay with significant others in order to remain in good standing with traditional Indian families — a lesson learned the hard way.
As the trip went on, the driving became monotonous.
“We just really wanted to be done at a certain point,” Halligan said. “We would wake up at six in the morning, get ready and drive until it was dark and only stop for chai [tea] or food or petrol. It was really weird because we were tourists in India but we weren’t doing anything except driving. At the same time though I think it was the coolest way to see a country. It was also really cheap.”
When the team reached the finish line a day early, it was anti-climactic. There was no celebrating, confetti or spectators — only a free coconut.
“Let’s get our free coconut and go to sleep,” Stirn said, recalling his reaction.
That’s what they did. After completing the Rickshaw Run in one piece, the team finally got to be tourists, celebrate their journey with other Adventurists — Donahue nearly won a beard contest — and explore the country on two feet.
Atheists nervous about ‘coming out’ in southern states
Jan Register drives to her job at Elon University’s Numen Lumen Multi-Faith Center every morning and enters a building that promotes open-mindedness. When she drives home at night into Alamance County, she must convert to a Christian-only mindset for her family and friends. Little do they know she accepts atheism, among other faiths.
“It’s a bubble in Alamance County. It’s a completely different world than out there,” Register said. “When we first announced we were going to build this building and that it would be multi-faith, there was pushback. There’s a certain retired preacher in town who loves to dash off letters to the Times-News saying we’re all going to hell for not trying to convert students to Christianity. It is really foreign to people around here.”
As a Christian in the South who thinks differently, Register is stigmatized. And she’s not alone.
It is against the law in North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee for an atheist to hold public office. Each of these states employs different language in its constitution barring this minority group from leadership but makes it clear to state residents that not believing is not accepted.
According to the U.S. Constitution, there can be no religious test for holding office, so why have these particular states failed to amend their state constitutions? It may be because they rest within the Bible Belt.
If atheist politicians aren’t accepted by Southern states, atheist residents within those states assume they won’t be either. This trickle-down effect encourages the silencing of a minority group that thinks differently, leaving atheists in a position reminiscent of LGBTQ-identifying citizens — with the paralyzing task of “coming out.”
“A number of elected officials have quietly told me that they, too, are non-theist but don’t want to deal with the public attention that they might trigger if they were open about it,” N.C. politician Cecil Bothwell said. “I don’t blame them, and really, most of us don’t make much fuss about things we don’t believe in. I don’t believe in a flat-earth, leprechauns, astrology or spontaneous generation of mice in piles of rags, but I’ve never told anyone I’m an A-spontaneous generationist or an A-leprechaunist.”
Bothwell was elected to Asheville’s City Council in 2009. In writing “The Prince of War: Billy Graham’s Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire” before his campaign, Bothwell realized any critique of the evangelist might be regarded as religiously inspired. In order to avoid any perceived bias, Bothwell noted in the acknowledgements that he did not subscribe to any religion. What he got in return was hate from his hometown.
“Two smear letters were sent to thousands of Asheville voters warning them I was an atheist and intended to lead Asheville to hell,” Bothwell said.
Atheism locally
Throughout history, minority groups have had to overcome false stereotypes and the fears of the majority.
“If atheists wanted to vote as a block they would be a force to be reckoned with,” said Tom Arcaro, sociology professor at Elon University and regional atheism expert. “There’s going to be a backlash against politicians who use religious rhetoric to support their views eventually because the critical mass of atheists is increasing.”
Polls support Acaro’s view. According to a recently published Pew study, approximately 20 percent of U.S. adults do not affiliate with any particular religion. That includes 13 million atheists or agnostics and 33 million people overall who don’t identify with any religion.
“If you look at the landscape of American religious identification, the group that’s growing the fastest is the one with no religious affiliation — the irreligious,” Arcaro said. “If you extrapolate 5-10 years into the future, that’s a lot of people, and they’re going to begin having political power, making this a very timely issue.”
In the South specifically, at least 71 percent of each southern state’s population believes in God.
“My studies have shown that there is a clear difference between the stigma associated with atheism and the freedom with which people can come out in the South,” Arcaro said. “We can look in the U.S. and divide it up into four areas — The Bible Belt as the most stigmatized, next highest Midwest, next highest is the West Coast and the most secular is the Northeast. The stigma in the South is undoubtedly the highest. Coming out in Maine or Vermont is easier than coming out in Burlington.”
Atheism from a university perspective
Elon University is often referred to as a “bubble” in discussions regarding important issues. It sits in the Bible Belt but houses a majority of students from the Northeast.
“Atheism is not something that, being raised here [Alamance County], I’ve had exposure to at all,” Register said. “But if you look at statistics of how college students self identify when they come into school, you have so many ‘unknowns’ and so many ‘nones.’ And those are all people who are raised in a faith tradition, but they’re not going to label themselves as that when they leave their home. They’re searching. They’re going to figure out what it is they actually believe.”
Elon’s Numen Lumen Pavilion was erected in the spring of last year under the Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life to help students do just that — sort through their beliefs — whether they associate with a religion or not.
“Our goal is to help students become rooted in their own faith traditions, whatever that is, and if that is a no faith tradition, then that’s included,” Register said. “There are 14 major religions, and one of them is atheism.”
As a devout Christian, Register said even as recently as five years ago, she wouldn’t have pictured herself holding a position in a building called the Numen Lumen Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life. Alamance County, her home, only accepts one faith.
“Part of our mission is to try to educate the public on what we’re doing, what these programs are all about and why we’re multi-faith,” Register said.
Register’s ideas about exclusivity in Christianity have completely changed since accepting her job at Elon, but those of the surrounding county have not. Her 16-year-old son asked her why she was taking a job arranging field trips for Muslims, and one of her best friends, a Primitive Baptist, won’t speak to her about her job at all because it promotes the wholehearted acceptance of a religion outside of Christianity.
While the Truitt Center holds weekly cultural events that are open to the outer community, the Secular Society at Elon works to provide an outlet for the many religiously unidentifying students at Elon who may feel unwelcome in the outer Alamance County region.
“At Elon I still never said I was atheist,” said Rachael Berman, an Elon alumna. “I didn’t feel as though there necessarily would’ve been a bad result if I told people, there just didn’t seem to be a point in me [coming out as atheist] because there wasn’t a place I could turn to.”
Atheism through a national lens
When Herb Silverman ran for South Carolina office in the 1990s as an atheist, he was bombarded with hate mail and anonymous phone calls. However, in the face of scrutiny he discovered something important — there was a closeted population of atheists.
“Many had thought they were the only atheists in South Carolina, and most were closeted for fear of social and family disapproval,” Silverman wrote in his book, “Candidate Without a Prayer.” “These isolated atheists needed a supportive community, so with my list of local names I suggested meeting to see if there was interest in organizing an [atheist] group.”
This interest meeting, after years of cultivation, formed into the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, or SHL, and Silverman was its leader.
Less than 18 years later, Silverman was a national figurehead for atheists as president of the Secular Coalition for America. He currently blogs for The Washington Post and has spoken at numerous national debates.
Silverman and other national figureheads like him have provided the inspiration atheists need to come out in a country that’s always expressed belief in God.
“The community has just exploded in the last four and a half years,” said Seth Andrews, admin of “The Thinking Atheist” Facebook page. “Research shows the [number of] people who are saying they aren’t religious has doubled in the last 20 years, and I largely credit the Internet. Now information is no longer logged up, no longer out of reach of those who want to double check the claims of preachers, pundits, parents and anyone else.”
Now, with questions answered and resources available in bulk, skeptics are more comfortable policing the separation of church and state within their local governments — no more connecting the polls with the pews.
Until then, Faith supports political identity in the South, faith and political views shape the direction of voting and those things combine to result in a seemingly permanent bond of church and south. But more than that, a possibly permanent residue of church and state upon the laws of our nation and the representatives it elects to serve.
Iconic video of Viet Cong execution inspires Elon sophomore’s passion for cinematography
Grandfather passes love of cinema to granddaughter by sharing story
“There was so much blood.” This is a phrase Elon University sophomore Emma Vo heard her grandfather utter repeatedly into the phone as he told her, for the first time, the story of standing witness to one of the most iconic events of the Vietnam War.
“He’d never talked to me about this,” Emma said. “I asked him about it when I was writing a paper last year, but he never thought it was something to share with a teenage girl.”
Emma’s grandfather, her ong noi, Suu Vo, was born and raised in Vietnam. By the time war broke out, the event he witnessed on Jan. 30, 1968, was his reality. What he didn’t know was the extent to which his story would shape history.
Moment in history
It was early on in the Tet Offensive. The war had been on for 12 years, and Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the South Vietnamese chief of national police, had had it. He picked up a pistol and impulsively sent a bullet through the skull of his enemy, a Viet Cong prisoner, in the middle of a Saigon street. The moment Loan pulled the trigger was not the moment history was made. It was made when Emma’s grandfather hit “record” on an NBC Studios video camera, capturing the execution on film.
Emma said Suu and his partner Eddie Adams, the photographer, had just left NBC Studios.
“They were just walking, and they heard all of this ruckus down the street, only a block away from where they were stationed. When they turned the corner, they saw General Ngoc Loan holding a Viet Cong prisoner hostage. He took him to the corner, and that’s when Eddie Adams took the pictures and my grandfather caught the footage. They didn’t know he was going to execute him right there on the spot.” –Emma Vo
In the shocking turn of events, the trained journalists knew what to do.
“[NBC Correspondent Howard] Tuckner kept whispering into Suu’s ear, ‘Keep rolling, keep rolling,’” George A. Bailey and Lawrence W. Lichty wrote in a 1972 edition of Journalism Quarterly. “Eddie Adams was snapping many photographs. Later Adams wrote that as Loan’s hand came up so did his camera and he just snapped by instinct … Tuckner and Adams were the only Westerners in sight. Tuckner feared their film would be confiscated or worse. He signaled to Suu to quickly change film magazines and hide the exposed footage.”
Emma vividly remembered hearing her grandfather speak about what happened next.
“Many Americans have been killed these last few days, and many of my best Vietnamese friends,” Loan told Suu after he fired the pistol. “Now do you understand? Buddha will understand.”
Video’s impact
In America, a countercultural movement was gaining attention, and the Vietnam War had fallen out of focus — the U.S. population thought the situation in Vietnam was under control. Then Suu’s video footage was aired.
“These images were among the first indications for my parents and many others that all was not going as well as the military would have had us believe,” said L.D. Russell, religious studies professor at Elon. “I did not understand what was happening or why, yet I could sense my parents’ revulsion, especially my mother’s, and somehow we sensed that something was terribly wrong.”
The nation saw, in black and white, that the violence had reached a different level. A man was assassinated at point-blank range without any form of trial, and it was so public American cameras could capture it at the same range.
Adams, in an interview with the Associated Press, recalled dropping off the film of the execution and going to lunch.
“I thought nothing of it,” Adams said. “It was a war. I had seen so many people die at that point in my life … It’s not nice, but he was a prisoner and [Gen. Loan] shot him. I might have done the same thing.”
Once the footage aired, it swept the nation. In the same interview, Adams said he received reports of the photo’s impact while in Saigon and never understood it. Like Emma’s grandfather, it was his reality — it was nothing special.
In the U.S., the footage was thought to be so violent the question became one of media ethics: Is this footage too graphic to be shown on television?
“Suu was very calm. His hands did not shake as he kept the camera rolling and zoomed into the side of the dead man’s head where blood spurted out like a fountain,” Howard Polskin wrote in a 1983 article about the footage.
The amount of blood Emma ’s ong noi described over the phone cannot be exaggerated when captured in real-time. And according to an academic journal by Mark D. Harmon, on TV Networks during Vietnam 20 million viewers saw the blood.
“NBC got a lot of letters in the mail complaining about it, saying, ‘You shouldn’t put that on air, it’s too graphic,’” Emma said, recalling details from her grandfather’s story. “I’m in Media Law and Ethics right now, and we’ve been talking a lot about what you can show on TV and movies … But, to me, it’s the truth. It shouldn’t matter. It’s news. It happened. You’ve got to show it.”
Although news stations were faced with hard decisions in regards to ethics during the war, both U.S. officials and the media were forced to ask themselves, what is our true aim?
“Being confronted up close with such brutality led people to see major problems with the war,” said Safia Swimelar, Political Science and Policy Professor at Elon. “Many have said that photo and video also just illustrated the moral ambiguity of the war, since it showed that both sides were engaged in violence and possible war crimes.”
Regardless, the video and photo’s impact from that day is indisputable.
“Eddie Adams said that he felt he ‘killed’ the General Loan with his camera,” Swimelar said. “The photo and footage ruined his life and reputation, and he always felt bad about it. [Adams] saw [Gen. Loan] actually as a hero and not a murderer.”
A second generation of cinema
At Elon, the girl on the other end of the phone-line was changed.
“My grandfather saw history before his eyes, through his camera, and that’s what I want to do in filmmaking,” Emma, a cinema major, said. “I don’t want to do really out-there stories, I want to do stories that mean something in today’s world — showing people the truth, even if it’s gruesome or graphic, so they form a connection and do something about it. The same way America felt they needed to do something in Vietnam after seeing my grandfather’s footage.”
Suu spent 10 years in Vietnam covering the war for NBC Studios (1965-1975). He and his family left the country April 22, 1975, eight days before the Fall of Saigon.
Emma thanked NBC Studios and, by extension, a video camera, for her and her family’s lives. She plans to spend the rest of hers seeking the truth latent in bloodshed, the same way her ong noi did nearly 50 years ago.
“I don’t know if my dad’s family would’ve left Vietnam if my grandfather didn’t work for NBC news,” Emma said. “That was their way out, that was how they escaped from the war, being in a family that was connected with an American employer.”
Now Emma said she cherishes the opportunity to bring up her ong noi, her inspiration.
“When I tell people about why I want to go into media, I always talk about [the execution footage] and ask them if they know of it, and most people say yes,” she said. “That’s pretty cool. My grandfather still doesn’t realize how commonly known it is he is.”
I bought some Frye’s and I don’t know why. Has Elon impacted your style?
The page entitled “Multicultural Elon” housed under the “Admissions” section of Elon University’s flagship website begins with the sentence, “Diversity is honored and welcomed at Elon. Students come from 48 states, the District of Columbia and 57 countries and represent many different cultures and ethnicities.”
However, a question I’ve asked myself during my time on Elon’s campus is do Elon students represent “many different cultures and ethnicities” in their appearance and, more specifically, in their fashion?
From a purely observational standpoint, I don’t believe Elon’s campus has a diverse fashion culture. Not only have I observed this first-hand, but it also seems to be a frequent complaint amongst students, like how “the guys here only wear pastels and khakis and girls only wear Tory Burch and cowboy boots.”
Here’s my theory: Elon’s international students and even students from around the United States have been influenced, adapted and assimilated to fashion unique to Elon and the South. What does that mean? I’ll use myself as an example.
I’ve moved four times and have seen fashion shift in each place, but I adapted largely to East Coast style. In my time on the East Coast, I went to both public and private school, which significantly changed my approach to fashion. I found that at each school there were a multitude of factors that influenced each individual’s daily attire decisions, but the driving factor was always rooted in social pressure.
Now, I don’t mean the kind of social pressure that includes your high school’s respective Regina George telling your high school’s Cady Heron equivalent to exchange her “African” threads for some pink minis. I’m talking about the kind of social pressure that is latent. The kind where you don’t necessarily understand why you just asked your mom to buy you Etnies, a flat brimmed hat (for guys), or pearls (for girls). But you did — because of the very real desire to fit in. And now? Girls are shopping at Aeropostle and American Eagle, guys are hitting up Lids and Hollister, and folks … there’s no going back from that, just like there’s no return receipt for the knock-off cowboy boots I purchased solely to commemorate my jaunt to Southern culture and to Elon.
In some way or another, everyone has made a shift in his or her style to fit Elon’s “established” style. Define it how you will, but the human occupants of the Elon bubble and their clothing choices have manifested, in some way, in the clothes you choose to buy or put on your body. If you notice it’s cowboy boots, think for a minute and ask yourself if you’ve strayed from your stylistic roots. If so, how can you incorporate them back into your current style? Try to find a balance so Elon’s community can boost its representation of campus diversity through fashion, one of our primary forms of expression, and collectively pop the perceived homogeneity of the bubble.
Good life: Elon alumna lives dream
“It’s the little things” is a statement commonly heard on the topic of what makes life good. While each person has their own view of what makes their cup half full over the alternative, as a rule it’s best to crosscheck individual definitions of the good life with the Kanye West song.
The “good life” is officially defined by West as a “living spree” — “the good life, it feel like Atlanta, it feel like L.A., it feel like Miami, it feel like N.Y.”
If West’s lyrics allude to the truest of good lives, Elon University alumna Hannah Berg ’12 is living it out to a tee. In fact, she will have been to all of the destinations listed off by West in the past two weeks alone (sans Atlanta) as Director of Development for Young Hollywood, an entertainment news company based in Beverly Hills, Calif.
“Tonight I’m at fashion week in New York and tomorrow I’ll be back in LA. Last week I was in Miami, the week after next I’ll be at South by Southwest in Texas,” Berg said. “Sometimes I have to pinch myself.”
If Berg truly does pinch herself for each career jump within Young Hollywood’s entertainment empire, her forearm is undoubtedly raw. The 23-year-old Elon grad was given a job assisting YH’s CEO, RJ Williams, the year she graduated, was promoted to Director of Development in less than two-years and was, most recently, offered a co-hosting spot on one of two YH original TV shows that will be aired this summer all over the world.
“The truth is, I don’t have one of those 9-5 jobs or one that lasts Monday-Friday. It’s a lifestyle and I love that,” Berg said. “I’m living my dream job and didn’t know that this kind of job even existed. I get weird looks when I tell people my age, but those looks motivate me. I don’t go into meetings without studying every possible aspect of the material and in that sense, I’m still that nerd I was at Elon.”
While at Elon, Berg was a part of Phi Mu, the Communications Honor Society (Lambda Pi Eta) and the National Greek Academic Honor Society (Gamma Sigma Alpha). She majored in print and online journalism and minored in theater.
“I feel like I’ve been out of Elon for a long time but I’m still emailing Dr. Sturgill about my accomplishments. I would not have this job if I didn’t go to Elon, point blank,” Berg said.
And Berg isn’t the only Elon grad of her year to live out a dream. Adam Kaplan, ’12, was recently cast in Newsies on Broadway as Morris Delancey and the understudy for Jack Kelly, the lead. Berg described the irony of her dream job leading her to interview another Elon grad behind the scenes at his dream location — on a Broadway stage in New York City. (Newsies Interview:http://www.younghollywood.com/videos/tvfilm/behind-the-scenes/behind-the-scenes-of-newsies-musical.html)
While Kaplan is living the good life center stage in New York, Berg is traveling the country — even getting her own dosage of theater on camera for YH.
“I’m really proud of these shows because they’re honest and relatable,” Berg said. “And when it comes to hosting, I’m just myself. The weird part is I know they’re going to be dubbing my voice for other countries, which is kind of funny. I wonder how on earth they’ll translate some of the things I say.”
The two 26-episode shows have already been sold to over 30 territories internationally. Berg’s only hope is that their already well-established brand continues to grow in the U.S. (Links to subscribe to YouTube channel and like them of FB and Twitter can be found below).
Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/younghollywood
Twitter: https://twitter.com/younghollywood
Vanessa Lachey Interview:http://www.younghollywood.com/videos/yhstudio/2013/november/cringe-or-crave-with-vanessa-lachey.html
Student loans increasing, federal government responding
“The most stunning fact about college tuition is this: It has tripled since the 1980s,” said Mark Silva, deputy managing editor for government news at Bloomberg News in Washington.
The ever-increasing number of figures listed on college tuition bills is mirrored in the deficit students face on graduation day.
“The fact is they’re just really high and I don’t know whether or not I’m going to be able to pay them back,” said Andrew Creech, senior at Elon University. “I’ve racked up about $60,000 in loans.”
According to a new report released Wednesday by the Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS), the average debt of a graduating college student has gone up by nearly 10 percent. This number, according to the report, has increased by an average of 6 percent each year from 2008 to 2012.
“We’ve got a crisis in terms of college affordability and student debt,” President Barack Obama said in a tour of college campuses, speaking at the University at Buffalo in September.
The Obama administration is currently planning to implement a ratings system to judge colleges on yet-to-be-determined metrics aimed at measuring accessibility, affordability and student outcomes.
Obama would like to convince Congress to display colleges’ performances in this system on the condition they release their receipt of federal student aid. The idea would be to make this information more accessible to incoming college students, allowing them to foresee potential loan debt before in burns a hole in their cap and gown.
“They’re not going to be popular with everyone — especially those who profit from the status quo,” says Cecilia Munoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council regarding the project higher education system. But the new initiatves should put the interests of students first, she says.
“In Washington, the problem has become part of the political dialog surrounding initiatives to reenergize the American economy — with the in-affordability of college for many posing an obstacle to economic advancement, and the burden posed by enormous college loans hindering the ability of graduates to get an economic foothold,” said Silva.
According to the TICAS report, however, the ability to fortune-tell when it comes to student loans may be harder than the Obama Administration thinks. Colleges who offer statistics on their student loans vary year-by-year.
“While we cannot say why colleges that voluntarily reported debt data in the past chose to stop reporting, it underscores the limitations of voluntarily reported data and the need for the Eduction Department to collect this data for all colleges,” the report says.
Vice President of Admissions and Financial Planning at Elon University, Greg Zaiser said 72 percent of students receive some type of financial help, whether its need or merit based.
The name of the game is being strategic about “tuition discounting” and the universities’ endowment.
Regardless of Zaiser’s role in higher education, he has the unique perspective of both a financial officer and parent.
“Obama has directed the Department of Education to develop ratings based on criteria such as the percentage of students eligible for federal Pell grants, the overall affordability of schools, and how well they prepare students for post-graduate study and careers. The ratings are to be released by 2015,” said Silva. “The administration contends that colleges must be held more accountable for the outcome of their work.”
Abby Franklin 