With the rainy season almost past us, the primary incentive for expansion of the Price Center has nearly passed; after all, there are plenty of comfortable seats indoors and out when the sun is shining. Yet like one of those bowling pin-shaped boxing balloons, UCSD students are voting on yet another attempt to expand the Price Center.
It’s almost become the “”rite of spring”” — an annual orgy of accusations and counter-accusations (and post-election recriminations among the pro-expansion unholy alliance when the measures often fail) for a student fee referendum. It would be quite entertaining (almost as entertaining as A.S. elections, perhaps) if only it did not actually have real world consequence: the checkbooks of UCSD students.
The anti-referendum literature (at http://www.studentcontrol.org) makes for quite entertaining education. It almost reads like the Bible, even: And the Student Center begat the Price Center, which begat RIMAC, which begat the Price Center Expansion, and the sins of waste and gluttony of the original student fee referendum were passed onto its offspring.
Despite the anti-administration rants though, the “”no on expansion”” page makes some rather convincing points against expansion: For all the money students put into the (ostensibly) “”student”” center, why is it that the bookstore occupies absurd amounts of space, and UCSD catering caters to everyone except UCSD undergraduates? And, why is it every time the University Centers decide they need an expansion, they manage to get fabulously expensive color glossy posters and full-color inserts into a certain student newspaper? If one is going to go begging, one sure as hell had better look poor.
Yet despite the three previously failed referenda for the expansion, one does have to admit that the often vehement protests against RIMAC and the original University Centers student fees are a tad misguided in retrospect. Most students happily use the exercise facilities (and even if they do not, as this writer most often does not, they most likely could benefit from getting up and playing some racquetball rather than incessantly snorting Diablo, Counter-Strike, Snood or cocaine).
The lunchtime crowds at the Price Center testify to their heavy use on an average weekday. While almost everyone gripes at one time or another about the extra fees, no doubt most students largely overlook the numbers (probably because their parents pay the bills anyways).
So far all this talk of student control and despite the excesses of the Price Center in some arenas, railroading through the past two student fee referenda ended up in facilities that students do largely use and mostly don’t mind paying for (with the exception of a rather vocal, and decently sized group). And maybe that is the ultimate lesson of this entire exercise — even if the end results are such that students end up paying for a catering service they do not use, an expansive bookstore that exists largely to impress visitors and a student center less about food services than hosting conferences, the school as a whole still benefits, even if the undergraduates are being exploited.
After all, what rights should students have? Despite what they pay in fees, that amount is a pittance in comparison to what the state of California puts into this school; and if by milking the undergraduates for $100 or $200 a year gives the university a nice student center it can show off as its public face, so be it.
Undergraduates are here not as a matter of right, but as a matter of enhancing the welfare of the state of California, and it probably benefits the state of California more to have a shiny student center expansion rather than each of those students keeping the $117 a year. Especially if after the amount starts showing up on quarterly bills, the students do not bother to notice anyways. Student control and student rights start to look rather ludicrous if one takes the perspective that students owe the people of the state of California for their education and are subject to the terms imposed by the representatives of the government of that people — namely, the administrators — rather than having any intrinsic rights in the system. Rights and control over funds are given only insofar as it benefits the state of California.
This is not, however, to say that griping or mobilizing is useless; after all, the referendum has much improved over the bloated monstrosity that was the last expansion proposal, largely due to student opposition. But one does have to realize that the rhetoric about student control is all rather silly; there is no such thing, and there never will be because as undergraduates, the university entertains us rather than the other way around.
One final gripe this writer has about the referendum is that it seems irresponsible to craft a fee referendum that does not take effect until the building is actually built. While this no doubt means those who use the building will be the ones actually paying for it, it is morally untenable to defray the costs of this generation’s decisions to the next group of students at this university; after all, time is money, and getting the money to start building an expansion is not free. There is such a thing as interest.
In essence, pushing back the effective date of the fee increase is an irresponsible ploy to garner additional votes. But nobody said the damn thing would ever be run efficiently anyways. All one needs to do is look at the exorbitantly expensive signs telling us to vote next week.
