Dear Stuart Rabinowitz,
It is long past time we acknowledged that, in spite of Hofstra’s already exorbitant price tag, you are actively dedicated to cheating your students and capitalizing on their basic needs.
Hofstra University has consistently skimped on providing necessary student services whenever and wherever it can in order to turn a profit.
Firstly, we have observed that our university’s mental health care has long failed to meet basic standards of affordability, access and quality. To use a common example: Several of our members quickly ran through their three free therapy sessions at the Saltzman Center and others who could afford to pay for additional sessions were cut off from needed services after the maximum number of appointments – 10.
How many other students do you think have suffered as a result of this policy? Moreover, how many students have found their mental health needs insufficiently met by graduate student therapists who are underpaid and overworked?
We are far from being the only students to complain about the 10-appointment limit. Perhaps if you hired more professional therapists, you wouldn’t have to limit the number of appointments a student can have.
Perhaps if you fairly compensated graduate students for their work and provided them with more reasonable conditions, the strain placed on graduate workers and undergraduate patients would decrease.
Perhaps if you hired more professional LGBTQ+ therapists and therapists of color, students from said groups would feel more comfortable seeking out the mental health care that is their right. Perhaps if Hofstra made an earnest effort to safeguard the health of its students, its students would be healthier and happier. Perhaps.
Secondly, news of dramatic increases to on-campus housing prices is quickly circulating. With recent price hikes in both safety deposits and housing fees, you are not only chasing students off campus, but are also encouraging local landlords to raise their prices for student tenants.
Many such students are willing to pay increased off-campus rent simply to avoid the obscene prices of on-campus living spaces, many of which have gone without necessary renovations.
To address a third and final issue, we are deeply disappointed by the wages you pay your student employees.
You charge your students so much for their education that they’ll be in debt for years to come, and choose to endanger their futures further by refusing to pay the state minimum wage so they can more comfortably afford this overpriced school. Like all workers, student workers deserve to receive the fruits of their labor.
We, the members of the Hofstra Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), demand that the mental health services on campus improve. Most universities of this size offer free mental health care to their students, and properly staff their facilities. Hofstra’s negligence towards this matter is a disgrace.
We encourage fellow students who are frustrated with Hofstra’s financial predation to join us in refusing to accept these unjust policies.
If we stand together, we can hold our administration accountable to us, the students, and make Hofstra a more empathetic place to learn and grow.
In solidarity,
Hofstra YDSA
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[email protected] • Mar 7, 2018 at 8:50 pm
No one is forcing you to go to Hofstra, you chose to go there, knowing that it’s expensive. Don’t complain about something that was your choice, as you could have gone somewhere else. Second, if you don’t like how much Hofstra chooses to pay their student employees, don’t work for Hofstra. Put some effort in and find a job somewhere else. Third, Hofstra offers mental health services simply as a service to students, they’re not meant to be people’s regular therapists, they are meant for the occasional times that students need some extra help.
[email protected] • Mar 8, 2018 at 2:39 am
The article indicates that the authors knew going in that Hofstra would be expensive. Why would they choose to go to a school without knowing how much they were going to pay? The piece is about the price increases for living on-campus , which already adds to the high costs students and their families are paying. But let’s breakdown this point about high costs for college –
It’s all about the allocation of resources. If students are paying high for school, surely they need to be incentivized. The economy works on that simple price model where the higher the cost, the more rewards need to come. If poor mental health services are being offered to students, on top of unpredictable housing costs and stagnant low wages (which by the way is a bummer for select international students who can’t work anywhere else but on campus which pay low minimum wages), then students will find it harder to stay at the university.
Also, the mental health services offered to students should be services, but the article’s point is that they are not. If students receive healthcare from the university, then why not the same model be applied to mental health care? This is due to stigma of mental health, which again is reiterated by Hofstra’s careless mishandling of its mental health care services. If I play for the Hofstra soccer team and I injure my foot, surely the school will take care of me. However, if I need mental health, my path to getting services will made harder. Colleges are meant to be grounds of cultivating students and nurturing them to become leaders in the world and beyond. Some look at it as a stepping stone to a better job. That maybe, but they still need to have the room for therapy in case they need it. Some public high schools offer counselors, therapists – why can’t a large private institutions like Hofstra do the same?
This is the final point. If Hofstra is to emanate the exact attitude of this comment, then surely it will find it hard to compete against better schools going into the future. Hofstra doesn’t have the storied past of an Ivy-league school or the prestige or name of an NYU. It is disadvantaged, in a sense and this approach towards not taking of its students, only deepens its weakness as a school. If Hofstra is better at cultivating its students, more willing to be innovative with its handling of price increases and student affairs, then it can have serious clout against better schools. If it stays like this and carries the sentiment of this comment, then it will be stagnant for a long time. Taking care of its students will be a win win for the student body and for Hofstra, going forward.