Letter to the Editor: Spoiler: USU Doesn’t Care about the Student Body

Do you feel like you’ve been backstabbed over the athletics ticketing issue? In short, welcome to USU. You can get a good education here, but you will also be backstabbed by the administration. The “powers that be” typically only fake concern for your well-being as a student while constantly making decisions that impact your life in negative ways. The current issue with reducing student ticket allotment is just the most recent issue.

Meanwhile, perfectly good student housing was demolished so that yet another building for the school of business could be built. If there’s a lesson we wish the administration had learned before now, it’s that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

I have seen plenty of other issues in my time as a student here. Take, for example, the “tuition plateau.” One day, the administration at USU decided that anyone taking 12-18 credits should pay the same tuition. Now, those taking less than 12 credits pay much more per credit than they would if the pricing was linear. Graduate students are considered to be full-time students at 6-9 credits, as opposed to 12-18 for undergraduates, so the plateau model hurts graduate students. The plateau also hurts part-time students, many of which are trying to work while going to school so that they don’t graduate with an enormous amount of student debt.

The list goes on: charging everyone $250 per semester for books when more and more textbooks are being distributed for free, building the ARC on top of the HPER field even when the student body voted “no,” continuing to funnel money in increasing amounts to athletics when many buildings around campus are in desperate need of basic repair/remodeling, etc. Spoiler alert: the administration at USU will almost always try to squeeze more money out of you while giving as little back as possible. Sometimes, they will throw you a bone, usually in the form of free food or, in the case of COVID lockdowns, an itty, bitty rebate in fees. But in the end it’s all just Aggie Bull: the lighted “A” upon the hill stands for “Administration,” not “Aggies.”

That being said, we can actually do something about it. Instead of showing up to games to “show that we have a strong demand for student tickets,” as was suggested by our elected student leadership, we should forget showing up to games at all. We should show that there is no demand for bad policy, or for any policy that affects the student population in negative ways. We should vote for more skeptical student leadership: if it isn’t directly enhancing the educational experience of the student body, we shouldn’t be paying for it. (I should also say that having the “best” student section in the nation is nothing to brag about: is anyone planning to put that on their CV?)

Let’s send the message that we’re done being duped!

-Ben Shaw is a graduate student at USU. He enjoys the outdoors and spending time with his wife and three children.