The A.S. Council dropped discussion of a motion Wednesday that would force UCSD graduate students who want to attend Sun God to pay for their tickets rather than be admitted to the concert free of charge, as their undergraduate counterparts do. The matter, at the very least, is worth dicussion. Graduate students, like all others who do not pay for the concert through student activity fees, should pay for their admission.
The concert held at the end of the Sun God Festival is not merely a perk provided to students; it is a service that is funded through student fees, which are paid each quarter by all undergraduates as part of registration fees. The simple fact is that services to be rendered — whether concerts or otherwise — must be paid for.
There is no free lunch under the balmy sky of the Sun God.
However, the timing of this issue is somewhat suspect. With the festival less than a month away, it seems that a cut-and-dry decision on whether to allow free admission to graduate students should have been taken care of in the early planning stages. Waiting until three weeks before the festival would have been too obviously political.
The reasons for making graduate students pay seem obvious — paying for services. In addition, we hope that if the council votes on the measure, it will do so without letting the Graduate Student Association’s decision to opt out of the Athletic Fee Referendum influence its decision. Graduate students are not charged, and rightfully so, the $28.25 per quarter for the recently approved athletics fee, because they were not included in its planning. This matter is not the fault of the GSA, but of the committee that designed the referendum.
But now, even though graduate students do not have to pay for the increase in athletics spending, including club sports and recreation, they will share in the benefits of the increase: a better athletic department. This is not fair, but neither is life.
If the A.S. Council wishes to tighten its belt for financial reasons, that would be commendable. A slimmer, more transparent financial philosophy is a benefit to all students, but it would be wrong to remove that belt for the purpose of whipping graduate students into shape for not participating in the fee referendum. Vindictive, reactionary politics has no place on this campus.
Despite the GSA’s understandable decision to not participate in athletics fee referendum, they still should not get a free ticket to the Sun God concert on UCSD undergraduates’ tab.
Sun God is the premier annual event at UCSD. All students — from the freshman experiencing it for the first time to the senior’s last time to graduate students — should attend it because it is truly a festival for the students, by the students.
The bottom line is that the concert, the climax of the day’s events, should be appreciated and available to all, but not for free. If graduate students have gotten in for free in the past because of an oversight, that loophole should be closed. Undergraduates all pay through registration fees and it’s time graduate students helped foot the bill.
