Students in residence at New College are nervously rebudgeting at the news that their rent will rise 20 per cent next fall. Many are organizing in opposition—the New College Residence Council and the student activists AlwaysQuestion have planned a protest for Thursday, March 20. New College is looking for a way out of a financial sinkhole dating back at least to the double cohort, but principal Rick Halpern said the fee increase was planned for years, and is not meant to fix the college’s large deficit.

Even if the hike isn’t a direct response to the financial woes, the decision to spring it the all at once, rather than rolling it out over several years, is calculated to shock.

“I saw it as a political intervention whereby I could get the Provost and Simcoe Hall to respond to the college’s situation,” said Halpern. That situation is an operating deficit of $2.3 million for this year alone. Halpern said he hopes to renegotiate the mortgage for 45 Willcocks and sell several floors of the building back to Simcoe Hall.

Halpern defended the increase on the grounds that it brought New College residence fees in lines with other colleges’. To some students, this argumnet fell flat.

“There is a reason why New College has the lowest-price residence,” said Ann Marie Chung, president of the New College Residence Council. “The other two buildings, Wilson and Wetmore, have been in a state of disrepair for a long time.”

The original–and, most would now concede, flawed–business plan for 45 Willcocks suggested that profits from Wilson and Wetmore could pay down the mortgage for the new residence. But the leaky older buildings have not paid off their own 40-plus-year-old mortgages. Willcocks’ original plan predicted 100 per cent occupancy all year round, an assumption Halpern pronounced “ridiculous.”

The chances of U of T bailing out the college with a the college a no-interest loan look slim. In a possible sign of a new approach to ancillary services at U of T, the university is insisting that New College get its financial affairs in order on its own. A report, to be presented to the University Affairs Board next Tuesday, suggests that instead of receiving subsidies from the university, ancillary services should actually produce funds for the university. In fact, the report predicts that by 2013, ancillary services will make U of T a profit to the tune of $1.9 million.

Thursday’s protest meets at 1 p.m. in the New College quad.