As a freshman, 10984 had a name. He was a naïve young lad, who waived with a heavy heart to his parents as they drove away. He walked into Milton Daniel Hall, free to make the decisions and live the life that would shape his persona. Tuition was only around $330 per class hour then, and his semester cost at Milton Daniel was only around $900. While he is glad TCU is still under the average cost for comparable private universities, he wonders if the Stafford Loan program will raise the limit on how much one can borrow.
Fresh from Barbados, 10987 looks forward to her opportunity to work on a graduate degree. She doesn’t have transportation, so she moved into the Bellaire House Condominiums only to find out that in the middle of May, she needs to find a new place to live. The school gave her 10 extra days from the end of finals, as a courtesy, to move out.Unfortunately, the only option she has is to move out at the end of April, during a tough spell at school, because it would be difficult to find a place that would let her move in mid-month. Because she has no transportation, she has to find a place close to TCU that she can afford, or live on campus year round which she cannot afford without taking out another loan.
10874 had his car broken into, and all he got was a police report verifying his car was broken into. The solution for his problem: Build a fence around the TCU property. People who want to come onto our campus to break into our students’ property will have to climb the fence or walk around it. The students who can’t find anywhere to park on the TCU property had better start working out on the climbing wall in the University Recreation Center if they hope to get to class on time. He hopes that whatever his insurance doesn’t cover, he can cover with whatever money is left over from his student loans.
10467 reads the Skiff and can’t figure out why fees collected from students — to be used for the students’ sake by the Student Government Association — must be used to buy a new SuperFrog suit. She loves SuperFrog but can’t understand why the university’s sports marketing department doesn’t pay for the new suit. Is it not TCU that benefited from having that very suit all over the nation’s television screens? Is it not TCU that has seen an increase in licensing fees as a result? Yet, products the program uses to make it more visible are not funded by the department that is supposed to market them. She wonders how much of her student loan was used to make such a purchase.
Driving around campus on her way to sign more student loan papers, 10989 can’t find a parking space that is not on an illegal side street. She just wishes that when she finally gets parked, walks across campus and gets to the bathroom, the school would at least have purchased better toilet paper.
Carlos Alvarado is an education graduate student from Fort Worth.
