| What do your student activity fees buy you? |
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| Written by Steve White | |
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During O-week, SUB held a welcome to campus event. During the event the DJ started asking people to remove clothing. What a way to welcome students to campus! Let’s make sure these new students first impressions of the University are tainted with raunchy behavior encouraged by people who should know better. There are several issues here that need to be addressed. The first issue is what do we want the younger generation to learn. Another issue would be the use of student fees for purpose that may not be in line with what students want them to be used for. The final issue is the why colleges are being used to promote liberal views. Student organizations are great ways for students to learn other skills such as social and interpersonal skills. These skills are just as important as learning how to design a bridge or a high speed network. Usually first or second year students enter student organizations and learn how the organization operates from upper class students. This is important for both the upper class students and the new students. Many companies these days use mentors for new employees. It is a great learning process and both sides (mentor and student) learn from the experience. Is this what we want incoming students to learn from the upper classmen? That it is ok to promote inappropriate behavior? Maybe it was bad judgment on a few individual’s part but the news is full of stories of people using bad judgment and ruining their lives or careers. People in leadership positions need to be responsible for their actions and the actions of their subordinates. Inappropriate behavior can not be shrugged off and snickered at. Wrong is wrong – apologize to the students, parents and other people who were at the event. Then put in place rules to prevent it from happening in the future. Student activities fees have increase a lot over the years. These fees are used to fund student organizations on campus. We as students don’t have any choice –we have to pay the fees. To me this is almost like a tax. I have to pay the fee for the greater good of the campus. Kind of like the federal income tax, I pay a set amount of money so the federal government can operate and provide me with services. I have very little say in how those fees are distributed or how they are used. The O-week SUB event is an example of how student fees are used in a bad way. I seem to recall another bad choice in the use of student fees – the showing of a fantasy movie by Michael Moore. My whole problem with student fees (and taxes) is I don’t much say in what I pay and once the money is handed out, I really have no control on what it is spent on. I think when organizations or specific individuals within an organization set policy or determine how money is spent based on their own beliefs, we have a problem. Why can’t students have more of a say on what their student activity are spent on? Many clubs and organizations don’t get any funding and some organizations get more funding than they should; in my opinion. SUB is one of the organizations. It is interesting to see an article in last weeks Miner about the large television in the recreation center. The writer wondered who approved that purchase. He thought the money would be better spent on more and newer sporting equipment. His one mistake was saying he didn’t think he should criticize how money was spent because he wasn’t on the Student Council. I think he is wrong because he has every right to criticize how his student fees are being spent. We need more people to voice their opinions and maybe the money will finally get spent were students want the money to be spent instead of being politically correct and have the money spent of things that no students care about. I do agree with the article writer that there really isn’t a need for a large TV in the recreation center and secondly why are they promoting UMR to UMR students? Seems to me most students have already made the decision on which college to attend. Maybe SUB has too much money and doesn’t know what exactly to spend it on. It sure would be nice to get a great education from a high quality college without having to pay for all the “extras” someone else wants or thinks students should have… Kind of like government providing a fitness center for some people and making all the citizens pay for it. The final issue is what is wrong with an apolitical campus? Why does SUB think they have to make freshman think UMR a party or liberal campus. What is wrong with UMR being promoted as a top notch engineering college? If you ask me the top notch engineering school reputation has worked really well for many years and is continuing to attract quality students. Does the leadership in SUB think UMR needs to tarnish that reputation to pick up a few more students who might think UMR is turning into a liberal party school? What is SUB real purpose? If you look at their website and constitution they are spread out over a large range of topics. The one that caught my eye is “Social Awareness”. Why am I giving money to an organization that has a Social Awareness committee? I don’t need to pay for activities that deal with cultural/social diversity, health, sex issues. It sounds to me like condom classes in high school. College students are adults and need to learn on their own what values they will take with them through the rest of their life. We don’t need to be paying for a bunch of liberal mumbo jumbo on how to treat and respect others, how to be politically correct and we sure don’t need SUB to be promoting sex issues. What happened to the SUB that used to have great sold out concerts? Maybe they need to cut out all the “feel good” programs and get back to the providing services and activities the students really want. |
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