Editor, Daily Nexus,

It’s no secret that being a student isn’t cheap. Ever since I came to college, I’ve been living on the edge of my bank account, thanks to some premium prices. Please check any of the following that apply to you: paying ridiculous rent for half a room, books for a quarter that cost approximately the same amount as a month’s rent, burritos that cost what a minimum wage worker gets for an hour of labor. The list goes on. Although I – and everyone else living around this campus – get ripped off repeatedly, I’ve sort of come to live with it. Tuition, books, rent and, yes, even the occasional $7 burrito, are all necessary. Demand is high and prices shoot up, simple as that.

The recent Students’ Initiative, which raises every student’s fees by $400 per year, passed by a margin of what, 30 votes? That’s less people than you’d get in an optional midterm review session located across campus during a Halloween night. The part that makes me sick, though, is the fact that it wasn’t some big publishing company or a landlord ripping me off, but my own fellow students. The giant pink propaganda machine that is Associated Students worked so hard to successfully shaft us all. We have been bent over and torn a new one by 13% of our student body so as to become piggy banks. The underhanded tactics of bundle packaging the fee for a myriad of groups, some of which I’d never even heard of, and rushing the vote for Fall Quarter succeeded. I can see that I’m going to have to go back on my ramen diet to save up money for this fee. I have to cut down my nutrition budget by $400 a year so that I can pay for unwarranted costs. I wouldn’t be surprised if I were to see all the CLAS tutors outfitted with new sweaters. Alright, I have to stop writing this now because I need to sign this check funding the next A.S. marketing campaign.
ARIEL CARMELI

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