Death, taxes and student fees

It is often said that there are only two things in life that are certain: death and taxes. Although we at the Indiana Daily Student Editorial Board agree that there is no escaping the Grim Reaper or the inevitable panic of the ides of April, we have found another unassailable certainty in the life of a college student: no matter what happens, as time drags on, our tuition and fees will continue to rise. Period. \nSo guess what, folks? You only have a week left to get your 1040s in. Oh, and your student fees are going up, too. \nCome on, are you really that surprised? \nActually, last year student fees went down, due to the removal of the $30 athletics fee, but there are still a considerable number of Hoosiers left recovering in area hospitals from the initial shock of paying less. But for those touched by the sudden change, it should be sufficiently reassuring to know that fees may possibly increase by 5.2 percent next year and another 3.7 percent for the 2009 academic year. \nWe kid, we kid, but we do not see the projected increase as anything out of the ordinary. In fact, we’ve been expecting something of the sort for awhile. In our economy, market forces drive inflation – it’s a fact of life, and no amount of well-placed editorial columns attacking it is going to convince our economy to behave otherwise. \nAnd as much as we hate shelling out extra dinero, this increase barely keeps the pace with the current inflation rate (which averages about 3 percent), and it seems to be fairly legitimate. In the process of pushing for this change, the University has been fairly transparent and has actually specified where the extra cash flow would go. Primarily, the funds would go to the health center, transportation operations and the Indiana Memorial Union, which has been struggling to make ends meet recently. Student health? Sure, we like our peers to be healthy. As for transportation, we would rather generate revenue for it through increased student fees than by having more parking tickets issued – we get enough of those already! So why not cough up a few extra bucks to cover increasing costs? \nAs for the IMU’s share of the additional revenue, we are a bit more skeptical. While it’s a cool place to hang out, grab lunch, go bowling or do pretty much anything else you can imagine on a college campus, we would like to remind the administrative powers to make sure this new cash flow is used constructively. We’re definitely all for building maintenance (we don’t want something that size collapsing on us) and for subsidizing student organizations’ rent for their offices in the Union. Still, we ask that you don’t do anything too far-fetched with it. As much as we love the musical clock towers that remind us hourly that “You Are My Sunshine,” even when it’s raining, we would hope that the administration leaves such things to alumni gifts and uses the new revenue for something a bit more constructive.