You’ve seen the signs around campus: “”Your three dollars can make a difference.”” “”Join a cause.”” These of course refer to the upcoming fee referendum, which, if passed, would tack three bucks onto our bills once a year in order to help fund student-initiated outreach.
And it’s true: Your three dollars can make a difference. As California residents and UC students, we should support the referendum.
The referendum is facing some opposition mostly because of the principle behind it; students are concerned that if we make a referendum to help this cause (a slight break from the tradition of wholly student-oriented self-assesed fees), before we know it, the governor will suddenly start hitting students up left and right for cash — to fund better wages for UC workers, maintain the grounds at La Estancia and the like.
But voting to pass this one referendum won’t put us in danger of suddenly finding ourselves contributing “”just another $50 a quarter”” to fund reconstruction of Marye Anne Fox’s house, or anything of that nature. On the contrary, the whole process of voting for it should safeguard us against unwanted future referenda.
If Associated Students passed the fee referendum without a vote — or, horror of horrors, if the regents themselves tried — you might as well kiss your diploma goodbye and transfer to San Diego State. In a university where everything from the cost of a Naked Juice to tuition fees has increased drastically even since last year, we can’t afford to throw money at every new fee hike or textbook surcharge or referendum that comes our way. And to indicate that we’re willing to do so could indeed be the end of affordable public schooling. Sure, it’d be equally disastrous to suggest that, as students, we’re a money tree for all the areas in which California could use some extra cash.
Voting “”yes”” on this fee referendum, however, isn’t giving Sacramento any kind of carte blanche to our savings. It’s simply saying that we believe in the individual cause presented to us, we have considered the benefits of donating our money to it, and we have decided, collectively, that this particular instance is one in which we’re willing to give a few extra bucks because we choose to. The principle to worry about here is the vote itself.
In the future, a better precedent still would be to vote on the amount of the referendum as well. To do so would send an even stronger message that students are indeed in control of how and why we spend our money.
And three dollars? We’re not asking for a week’s wages here. Voting to pay an extra three dollars means foregoing one gallon of gas, a small salad at Sierra Summit or a recycled viewing of “”Elf”” at Price Center Theater. Over the course of a quarter, that’s not going to break you.
The three bucks that you’d be giving if the referendum passes would go to support student-initiated outreach programs, which, in this case, would help fund K-12 programs. As students who, presumably, went through such programs ourselves, it’s a good idea to make a conscious choice to give something back.
It’s true, of course, that there are countless groups in California with more money than your average UC student. (This is fortunate; otherwise, California would be a poor, poor place.) And it would be ideal for the mega-billionaires from Orange County and the dot-com CEOs from San Jose to pitch in and write checks next to which our fifty thousand would pale in comparison. But if we just sit around and expect the wealthy to fund solutions to California’s problems, we’re setting another — and also pretty dangerous — precedent: Let the rich ones solve things. Perhaps if we step up and make a donation to a worthy cause, those with the funds to really make a difference will do the same.
The best news — and, in fact, the only good news — about the insanely inflated tuition fees we find ourselves paying is that, on top of them, three bucks is spare change.
