By Shauntrice Martin
Pimp: One who finds customers for a prostitute; a procurer, one who derives income from the earnings of a prostitute usually by soliciting business.
If you’ve checked the summer class schedule, you may have noticed the numerous distance learning courses now available for students’ convenience. Isn’t it wonderful that, amid rising tuition and low retention rates, the administration is willing to provide its students with accommodations to fit any schedule? And they offer this service for only a nominal fee.
To break down the finance situation: students are charged 130 percent of tuition — $210 x 1.3 = $273 for residents per credit hour, $573 x 1.3 = $744.90 for nonresidents per credit hour. If you take distance ed classes in the Pan-African Studies Department, for instance, it’s a minimum three credit hours — $819 for residents and $2234.70 for non residents — and the central administration gets the bulk of that. Since the Pan-African Studies Department only receives 15.75 percent of the original revenue I’d consider us all getting pimped.
The central administration is pulling major weight; the revenue from Pan-African Studies is over $190,475. Are we gonna make them pump their brakes or will we continue this Booker T. Laissez-faire attitude that has resulted in our getting turned out?
But doesn’t the ho always think the pimp has her best interests at heart? Let’s analyze this relationship. The administration is very obviously the pimp, and PAS is serving as the ho — so who’s the trick we’re turning?
A case could be made that the season ticket holders or the Board of Trustees are the customers we’re trying to please. Who signs the checks in central administration? Who do they answer to? Our pimps promised us a 45 percent cut of the revenue. We’re turning tricks left and right, yet our “protectors” take 65 percent off the top. That leaves 35 percent of the original pie. Out of that we get 45 percent, which translates to about $30,000. Even Iceburg Slim wasn’t that cold.
This situation is not unique to the Pan-African Studies Department — it’s simply the department I study in, so I identify with it.
Enter the mysterious bundle fees. Where does that money go? Why all the rerouting of funds? Like always, the cycle continues. Why do we stay in this relationship? I don’t really have an answer. It could be argued that we lack the privilege to create a separate institution. Other departments with access to better resources are, on face, completely different from those in the Pan-African Studies Department. At least if we’re gonna get pimped, can’t we stay in a nicer motel?
Shauntrice Martin is a junior majoring in Pan-African Studies, vice-chair of the SNCC and president of the University of Louisville Debate Team. E-mail her at:
