OUR VIEW: First tuition, now our pocket change

Aggies for Change is the first all-student giving program at Utah State, but what does that mean? The program gives out plastic piggy banks so we, the students, can fill it up with our extra change, then give back our now full plastic piggy bank in an effort to learn “philanthropy”.          

    They say they don’t expect us to give them thousands of dollars – because oh wait, we did that already – they just want us to give out our extra change. Filling up a piggy with extra change could end up being a good chunk of money, a chunk of money that we would like to spend on say … groceries? I have a light out in my bedroom, too but,hey – what is living in the dark as long as you’re giving, right?

    Our children are going to have to hear about how back in our day, we couldn’t eat our servings of fruits and vegetables because we were giving our hard earned change to our school. We will be going from eating Top Ramen every night to eating half of a potato because you can buy a month’s worth of that food for $4 at Wal-Mart.

    We understand the idea of “giving a little, seeing a big change” and we don’t want to sound heartless by saying we have an issue with this new idea. This idea, however, doesn’t give any specifics about what  we are raising money for. As appealing as putting money in a jar for the heck of it sounds; scholarships, college funds, or just the general university fund is a bit too vague for us to feel comfortable with donating to a school to which we have already given thousands, and will eventually give tens of thousands.

    College students are open-minded. We are unselfish when it comes to helping others when we think it can make a change. We raised $3,000 for a soccer team because the Freshman class read a book about it – and yes, we gave them our extra change. However, the majority of college students aren’t well-off enough financially to just give money to a cause that hasn’t been specified simply because cute piggy banks are handed out.