To the Editor:

As a recent graduate of the College of William and Mary, I am disturbed by politicians using Virginia’s public universities as a political football. I chose William & Mary for two reasons: its affordability and its quality. With politicians like Barbara Comstock (R) raiding our schools for political capital, it may lose both.

While tax dollars account for a mere 18 percent of William & Mary’s budget, in-state students enjoy twice the acceptance rate and one-fourth the tuition of out-of-state students already. The 32 percent of out-of-state and international students at William & Mary enrich the educational experience of the Virginian majority, pull the schools up in rankings, and perhaps most importantly — pay 70 percent of all tuition.

Ms. Comstock wants to force Boards of Visitors to slash their own school’s funding by taking more in-state students. How will she pay for this? Cut the salary of my favorite professor? Raise tuition or taxes? Even devalue my diploma?

Ms. Comstock proposes increasing out-of-state tuition from $24,690 to over $50,000, making Virginia schools more expensive than Harvard, a top-ranked university that offers financial aid to all but its wealthiest students. William & Mary doesn’t have that luxury and neither does the average American family wanting to send their child to school. Two hundred years after one Virginian warned against an “artificial aristocracy of wealth,” Ms. Comstock would impose this on the very public schools Thomas Jefferson helped found.

There’s answer to my question — devalue my diploma and that of thousands of other Virginians. No thank you. My choice is clear, Ms. Vanderhye and Mr. Deeds on Nov. 3, for our schools, for my school.



Antonio M. Elias

McLean