Milking all the students dry

It’s nothing new to have the greedy hands of USU in our bank accounts, but this president’s ambassadors fund-raising effort has a different air about it.

One that lacks the strong arm of threats against a student’s registration status.

One with a certain pleasantness.

One that, after the perfumed air clears, still stinks.

Between tuition, fees, over-priced textbooks, etc., students are already milked dry. So we see turning to the students as yet another money grab from the place already taking so much of our hard-earned cash.

It’s like asking the homeless to donate to the food bank. It doesn’t make any sense to have the beneficiaries of the donations do the donating.

At first glance, this would look like a desperate grab at straws from a university floundering in it’s fund-raising efforts. That couldn’t be further from the truth. If we’re to believe what the suits in Old Main say, then USU is making money hand over fist. President Albrecht’s comprehensive campaign is raking in millions.

That’s where the stink comes in, where the hand comes out of the fluffy cloud of pleasantry and slaps students in the face.

If we’re making so much money, why do we have to turn to the poor students for more?

Here’s the reasons they’ll give:

1. The money goes directly to your college. That sounds great. Now we can have a better journalism – or insert your college or department name in that slot – program. But why doesn’t our tuition get allocated in a similar fashion? And how are the funds raised this month really going to be appropriated? HASS is a huge umbrella encompassing many different poverty-stricken departments, so where’s the money going within that college?

2. We are showing the donors our enthusiasm by participating in the fund raising. They also think this will assure future donations. We didn’t know school spirit or university pride was measured by the amount of money we can dig out of our wallets. Donors would probably rather see students succeeding in the classroom and achieving post-graduation success.

3. Our donations will be matched, meaning your $5 will then become $15. This is the part that’s hard to get too upset about, but we need not overlook the basic problem: Why do the students have to be the catalyst for people to donate? Is philanthropy, or the side-effect of having your name on a building or department, not enough for America’s upper tax bracket these days?

4. The “It’s only a dollar” defense. Maybe it is only a dollar, but the tiny amount doesn’t change the fact that the university is trying to ring the students of USU completely dry. Even if it is “just a dollar,” that doesn’t mean we need not be skeptical and ask questions like why, where, who and how.

So even the most hardcore among us will probably pony up a dollar for the greater good.

But what you guys in your offices on the first floor of Old Main – yes, you know who we’re talking about – can’t forget is that our giving isn’t tacit consent to continue to inch the knife closer to the students’ financial jugular veins in an effort to raise money that it seems pretty obvious is already flowing quite freely into university coffers.

The point is, we are already asked to empty out our pockets about twice a year – sometimes three times – maybe enough is enough.

Couldn’t you at least wait until we’re out in the real world, hopefully using our USU degrees to make money, to start begging for donations? If you waited, you’d probably get a better reception – and a whole lot more money.