Mirror - Vol. 33, No. 12 - November 29, 2007

              WEEK OF NOVEMBER 29,2007
Vol. 33, Iss. 12 - 20 pages
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The independent student newspaper
of Fairfield University
We are red, we are white, we are dynamite!
Students turn out in full force to cheer on Stags
Photos: Left and top right by Elyse Raby, above right by James Nguyen
Stags in the stands: Fairfield students turned out in full force the weekend before Thanksgiving to cheer on Stags sports. The Red Sea became the White Sea, as almost 800
students attended the Stags' double-header against Sacred Heart on Sunday, top right. Led by FUSA President Hutch Williams '08, the students out-cheered the fans from Sacred Heart,
helping the basketball team to victory. The women's volleyball team faced off against Siena in the MAAC Championship at Alumni Hall on Monday night, and the fans came out again. The
team fell short, but the Red Sea, bottom right, and men's volleyball team, left, cheered them on even in defeat, chanting "Let's go Fairfield" as Siena celebrated the victory.
Tuition rising at double the inflation rate across country
BY MELISSA MANN
Although it is far from breaking news,
college tuition is costing students a pretty
penny, and it seems as though there's no
end in sight.
In a recent report released by the Col-lege
Board, tuition and fees at public and
private universities throughout the country
rose at more than double the rate of inflation.
An article by the US News & World Report
puts the increase at $500 out of pocket for
each student.
Not counting room and board, tuition
and fees at private colleges increased 6.3
percent, while public four-year colleges
saw an increase of 6.6 percent, according
to the report.
"The average price of college is con-tinuing
to rise more rapidly than the con-sumer
price index," said Sandy Baum,
co-author of the College Board report and a
senior policy analyst for the College Board,
in the report.
The increase is surpassing the rate of
family incomes and prices for other con-sumer
goods; consumer prices have risen
less than 3 percent a year, while the net
tuition at colleges and universities has risen
at an average of 5.6 percent, according to a
recent New York Times article.
Compared to similar institutions, such
as Fordham, Boston College and Vil-lanova,
Fairfield's tuition including fees has
increased 6.1 percent, as opposed to 8.11,
6.47 and 3.96 percent respectively, accord-ing
to a chart assembled by the Finance and
Administration office.
Fairfield Vice President of Finance and
Administration William Lucas said that in
order to determine how Fairfield is doing
with regard to tuition increase, it's important
to look at these "peer institutions."
"The operating costs are higher in
New England than in a place like Idaho,
for example," he said. "And against these
schools we've had a lower average increase
the last two years."
However, this doesn't make the sticker
shock any less of a problem for students.
Brianna Cohoon ' 10 said she has felt the
effects of college tuition skyrocketing.
"I didn't realize it was going to increase
so much," she said. "It's hard for the aid to
match [the increase]."
Stephanie Stadig '10 said: "In the
tough eco- TRACKING PERCENTAGE INCREASE OF TUITION
nomic times
we're in
now, colleg-es
shouldn't
be raising tu-ition.
But if
they have to,
they should
increase aid
and scholar-ships
to pre-vent
students
from borrow-ing
more."
Lucas
said that
Fairfield is
doing all it
can to help
students with regard to aid.
"We've made significant increases in
financial aid," he said. "When tuition went
up $6 million, financial aid increased by
$3.3 million."
Erin Chiaro, director of Financial Aid,
supports Lucas, and said in an e-mail that
"Fairfield has a deep commitment to pro-
Photo illustration by Katie McCarthy
viding students with financial access to a
Fairfield education, assisting over 60 percent
of our students with the cost of college. To
keep up with the cost of tuition, Fairfield
has increased its financial aid budget by
33 percent in the past three years. Fairfield
SEE "TUITION" ON P. 5
CIA agent, ambassador reveal controversial battle with White House
BY KATIE BARRY
Treason is never old news.
That was the message Joseph Wilson and
Valerie Plame Wilson gave a packed Quick
Center on Tuesday night.
Valerie Plame Wilson is best known for
her outing as a covert CIA agent in conser-vative
columnist Robert Novak's July 2003
column. Plame and her husband, former
Ambassador Joseph Wilson, claim the outing
was retaliation by the Bush Administration for
Wilson's July 6,2003, New York Times op-ed
piece "What I Didn't Find in Africa," in which
he claimed the Bush Administration had been
wrong in its claims that Iraq had been seeking
yellowcake uranium from Niger.
The claim, part of the President's 2003
State of the Union address, had been an es-sential
aspect of the evidence provided by
the Administration for
going to war in Iraq.
Plame, who was
prohibited from ac-knowledging
her in-volvement
with the
CIA before January
2002, said she was
hurt and "outraged"
by her outing, saying PLAME
it was a "terrible irony.... As a CIA operative,
you anticipate being outed by your enemies,
certainly not by your own government," she
said.
However, she spoke of her old career
fondly, laughing about her prowess at shoot-ing
AK-47's and the questionnaires she had to
answer in order to become an agent, including
SEE "WILSON" ON P. 4