The school’s finances have grown at pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­in­able rates. Between fis­cal years 2008 and 2013, North­east­ern expe­ri­enced a 66 per­cent growth rate in dona­tions, and though the admin­is­tra­tion holds its finan­cial records very close to the chest, it’s fair to assume that the school’s endow­ment (which was $713.2 mil­lion in 2014) has grown tremen­dous­ly. The uni­ver­si­ty has become a prime exam­ple of America’s cor­po­ra­ti­za­tion of high­er education.

Since the mid-1990s, Boston’s North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty has under­gone a com­plete makeover. What was once a blue-col­lar, major­i­ty-com­muter uni­ver­si­ty has now become known for its world-class edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming and facilities.

Much of the university’s growth can be cred­it­ed to North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty Pres­i­dent Joseph Aoun. He took office in 2006 and has since earned the school a top 50 spot in the U.S. News & World Report list ​“Best Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ties.” To reward this work, the uni­ver­si­ty has put Aoun up in an $8.9 mil­lion home and has award­ed him a salary of $3.1 mil­lion a year.

That the uni­ver­si­ty has worked so hard to pam­per Aoun is per­haps not sur­pris­ing, as he has suc­cess­ful­ly applied cor­po­rate busi­ness prac­tices — for exam­ple, in 2013, the admin­is­tra­tion hired noto­ri­ous union-bust­ing law firm Jack­son Lewis to bat­tle adjunct faculty’s orga­niz­ing efforts—in grow­ing the university.

Tak­ing note of the curios­i­ty of Aoun’s salary and lifestyle, stu­dents at North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty this spring real­ized that Pres­i­dent Aoun makes 117 times more than the aver­age pro­tec­tive ser­vice employ­ee at the Uni­ver­si­ty. Led by Social­ist Alter­na­tive North­east­ern, a stu­dent group on cam­pus — an affil­i­ate of Social­ist Alter­na­tive, the same social­ist group of which Seat­tle city coun­cil mem­ber Kshama Sawant is a mem­ber — nine stu­dent groups, includ­ing North­east­ern Col­lege Democ­rats, Real Food Chal­lenge NU, and the Fem­i­nist Stu­dent Orga­ni­za­tion, have unit­ed in the fight against wage inequal­i­ty at their Uni­ver­si­ty, in a cam­paign called $15 Now NU.

Through a loop­hole in Northeastern’s stu­dent gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, $15 Now NU is orga­niz­ing a cam­paign to insti­tute a $15 an hour min­i­mum wage for all cam­pus work­ers. We’ve sug­gest­ed a num­ber of sources of mon­ey that could fund work­ers’ rais­es, includ­ing Pres­i­dent Aoun’s salary.

Despite resis­tance from the school’s Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment, which has act­ed in con­cert with the admin­is­tra­tion, $15 Now NU came forth with a body of over 2,000 stu­dent sig­na­tures demand­ing that the $15 uni­ver­si­ty min­i­mum wage be placed on the spring stu­dent gov­ern­ment bal­lot as a ref­er­en­dum. This demand was suc­cess­ful, and the $15 Now stu­dent ref­er­en­da went to a vote last week. The results will be announced tonight at 7 pm.

In pre­vi­ous years, the school’s stu­dent gov­ern­ment has strug­gled to meet the vot­er thresh­old required to val­i­date the elec­tion (20% of the stu­dent body); this year, those records were shat­tered. The thresh­old was met well before vot­ing closed and was exceed­ed by 1,000 votes. The announce­ment tonight will deter­mine the tra­jec­to­ry of the cam­paign mov­ing for­ward. If over 50 per­cent of the vot­ing stu­dent pop­u­la­tion stands in sup­port of $15 on cam­pus, $15 Now NU will seek to enter pub­lic nego­ti­a­tions with the uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tion next fall. Whether the ref­er­en­dum pass­es tonight or not, the con­ver­sa­tion around $15 in Mass­a­chu­setts has been great­ly accel­er­at­ed by the work at Northeastern.

On April 14, the #Wage­Ac­tion coali­tion orga­nized a ​“Fight for $15” march that will like­ly be the city’s biggest min­i­mum wage event of the year. $15 Now NU has been great­ly sup­port­ed by Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union (SEIU) Fight for $15 Mass­a­chu­setts, a key orga­niz­er in the #Wage­Ac­tion coali­tion. The sup­port of SEIU Fight for $15 has been inte­gral to the cam­paign, which enhances the impor­tance of the April 14 march being kicked off at North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. This march will serve as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cel­e­brate the work of $15 Now NU as well as spread the fight to cam­pus­es and work­places citywide.

As the first group in the coun­try to fight for $15 at a uni­ver­si­ty, we at $15 Now NU are draw­ing the con­nec­tion between wage stag­na­tion and grow­ing stu­dent debt. With the co-involve­ment of work­ers and stu­dents in the cam­paign, both pop­u­la­tions are rec­og­niz­ing that over­paid uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tors and over­fund­ed uni­ver­si­ty ini­tia­tives are leav­ing all of us under­paid and swim­ming in debt. Rather than sug­gest­ing that work­ers’ rais­es come out of an increase in tuition, which would inevitably lead to the fur­ther immis­er­a­tion of debt-rid­den stu­dents, this coali­tion sug­gests that the top paid admin­is­tra­tors take a pay cut and that work­ers’ rais­es come out of the pock­ets of the uni­ver­si­ty’s wealth­i­est employ­ees. This cam­paign is a direct attempt to build the kind of stu­dent-work­er sol­i­dar­i­ty that could hold an increas­ing­ly cor­po­rate high­er-ed sys­tem to account.

With the seed plant­ed at North­east­ern, we’re hop­ing that stu­dents and work­ers across the coun­try will take notice and fight not only for $15, but for stu­dents’ and work­ers’ own­er­ship of their work­ing and learn­ing conditions.