The Voice

College tuition increases every year and scholarships aren’t providing the support they used to. Every semester increasing costs continue to surprise students.

Like most colleges, GC&SU has a series of nominal fees in addition to tuition, residence and dining fees and you may be surprised what your money covers.

Parking issues at GC&SU stretch back to our parent’s generation. Now we’re paying-no matter where we choose to park. Even if your vehicle never rolls into a GC&SU parking lot, you’re charged the fees. If you don’t have a car on campus, you’re still charged the same as a student who does.

We also pay an activity fee, technology fee and health fee that total in the hundreds of dollars. But how many of us actually use these facilities?

Generally, students use the health center when they’re sick, but those of us who are unfortunate enough to get sick eventually use the money we paid at the beginning. But what about those of us who stay healthy? What about students who have health insurance through their parents?

The clinic also provides free contraception for those who want it, but those who don’t believe in pre-marital sex or the use of contraception still pay the overall fee. It’s one thing to pay for a service you don’t use, but paying for a service you don’t believe in may be even worse.

And the athletic fee? $126 for free entrance to athletic events that, in the past, are infamously unpopulated.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to pay for what we want rather than an overall fee?

We have these great new Bobcat Cards that are loaded with money for school use. For example, if you’re a person who would take advantage of the on-campus activities you could swipe the card for entrance. That way your money is not wasted and the school still receives the funds that are needed to run the program, no matter how many people attend.

The fees discussed here are probably vital to the university and will probably never be lowered or become optional. The HOPE Scholarship has been frozen and tuition isn’t going down either. Until the GC&SU lets students decide what services we need, we’ll all be paying increasing fees until we graduate.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 3 2004. Filed under Our Voice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry