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NYU Student Lucy Parks Writes Heartbreaking Letter About Dropping Out Of College
A New York University has published the letter she personally wrote to school president John Sexton explaining her anger that she must drop out of college due to financial concerns, seeing it as the only way to avoid a life in education debt.
Lucy Parks said she faced violence as a gay teen in rural Virginia, and wanted to go somewhere like NYU in New York City — located blocks away from what some consider the birthplace of gay rights activism — that’s considered LGBT friendly. She further explained she came from modest means, with a middle school librarian as her mother and a father who made instruments and cabinets before passing away due to cancer.
Parks, who would’ve graduated in 2016, said she told the financial aid office in fall 2013 she needed at least another $10,000 or she’d have to leave, but was only offered an increase of $2,000:
After my college fund had been entirely depleted by the two years that I spent here, I faced the difficult choice of leaving without a degree or taking on an extra $60,000 to $80,000 of debt on top of the $15,000 I already owe. For fear that I would have to dedicate the best years of my life to paying that off, I decided to leave. I remain confident in my choice, but deeply saddened and angered by the fact that my only options were either to leave or devote years of my life post-graduation to paying off my debts.
(Read the entire letter embedded below.)
NYU has faced considerable criticism in recent years over generous loans for college administrators’ second homes, apartments for professors who don’t work for the university, while having one of the most indebted student bodies in the country.
Parks explains in the letter, posted on Sept. 10, although the university was her “dream school,” she concluded “students are not valued at NYU, but profit is”:
I am writing you because I am angry. President Sexton, you make nearly $1.5 million a year and as one of your students I often had to go hungry – and I am not the only one. I am angry that the new president-to-be of our Board of Trustees used to make millions off of student loan debt incurred by people like me. I am angry that people like him get far more say in the decisions of this University than teachers or students. I am angry that kickbacks and swanky vacation home packages have been given to favored professors and administrators, but students are still living in Bobst because they can’t afford housing. I am angry because NYU is continuing with the 2031 plan for expansion despite the fact that students, professors, and community members all stand firmly against it. And while so much of our money is being spent on those things, students like me have to leave because we aren’t given enough financial aid.
NYU did not immediately return request for comment.
Prior to her submission of the letter, she posted about dropping out on Twitter.
Just turned in my form to drop out of #NYU! I am now officially no longer a student. #EducationIsARight #StudentDebt pic.twitter.com/3RXEfayxHQ
— Lucy Parks (@ParksLucifer) September 2, 2014
NYU Student & Labor Action Movement, a campus activist group, is citing her letter as one reason they are organizing to demonstration against the growing student debt crisis.
Letter to John Sexton on my dropping out of NYU by Lucy Parks
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