For $90,000 a year, parents of some elite school students expected more than hate.
A report in The Wall Street Journal says some parents are calling for tuition refunds and rethinking future enrollments.
“They are not getting the education they expected and paid for,” Zev Gewurz, a Boston real-estate lawyer whose daughter is a senior at New York City’s Barnard College. Barnard was founded as a women’s college adjacent to Columbia University. The cost of attendance at Barnard tops $90,000
Gewurz said Barnard gave an “inadequate response” to hate speech.
“I try to tell her that this is not her fault, and that she is living in a moment in history and needs to keep her head high,” he told the Journal.
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Debra Lynn Eden, whose daughter is a junior at Princeton, complained, “It’s all a giant distraction to the students who are trying to complete their studies in a high-stress environment.”
Christopher Rim, founder and CEO of Command Education, which helps students complete applications, said parents of Columbia and University of California – Los Angeles students are calling for refunds.
“Physically blocking their child from attending class or a lecture hall is 100 percent not what they signed up for,” he said. “They are beyond upset at what’s going on.”
“I’ve had so many parents emailing, calling, asking me what they can do,” Rim told the London Times.
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“There’s been protests, encampments and physical violence that has interrupted their education and they’re not happy. Fees at these sorts of schools are phenomenally high; parents want to feel like they are getting what they pay for and right now they don’t,” he said.
The lack of a commencement also galls parents.
Lana Shami’s daughter will graduate from the University of Southern California without a ceremony due to protests.
“There will be no celebration at the university where we paid an exorbitant amount of tuition for the past four years. It’s a huge letdown,” Shami said.
“This is not the experience that my freshman daughter should be having, that any of the students of any year should be having,” Amy Gallatin, whose daughter attends Barnard, said, according to Fox News.
Gallatin said her daughter took a final exam Tuesday as protests were raging.
“My daughter is also frustrated [and] understandably so,” she said. “She had a final exam yesterday at 6 o’clock that she was taking from her dorm only to have the protesters on the street banging and clanging and chanting.”
Hearing chants interpreted as seeking the death of Jews was “a very unsettling experience,” Gallatin said, and “walking through all of those people is a scary thing.”
CNN reported that one Jewish high school senior, whose name was not used, ditched Barnard due to the protests.
The student chose Brandeis University in Massachusetts, in part due to its A rating from an Anti-Defamation League list of colleges that ranked their support for Jewish students.
“Barnard was my top choice. I was so dead set on going,” the student said. “But after seeing what is happening on campuses, I feel so glad I am going to Brandeis. I feel really happy and safe knowing they got an A.”
