Dear college students, you probably know that paying to go to school also means you pay for a lot of frivolous things. For example, Louisiana State University recently built a lazy river as part of an $85 million recreation center. You also pay for a lot of clubs you might not care about. Your school might have say a muggle Quidditch team. NYU students even founded a zombie defense league.
But what does that do to help educate students? That may sound trivial, but have you ever thought about the fact that you’re paying for your school’s more political clubs too? You might be conservative, libertarian, or you might not know what you think about politics, but you’re still paying for your school’s feminist student collective socialist club and others. That’s all paid for via student fees surcharges on your tuition bill used to fund clubs and other campus organizations. Explicitly partisan groups like college Republicans and Democrats are excluded, but other politically motivated groups aren’t–like the Public Interest Research Group, which was founded by Ralph Nader to promote progressive causes.
How do you feel about paying groups to fight for causes you don’t agree with or causes that you might even fight against? Take the University of Minnesota’s five campus school system. Students there pay a total of $35 million in student fees which comes to between $336-837 per student per semester. Some of that money is used to fund organizations, clubs, or causes that many students are ideologically or religiously opposed to. If you assume every other state public university system brings in a similar amount, that’s $1.75 billion a year nationwide.
Some lawmakers have started to take notice, but with little success. In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker introduced a budget proposal that would allow students to opt out of such student fees, but the state legislature turned him down. In Minnesota, State Rep. Drew Christensen introduced a bill that would have done the same; unfortunately it was opposed by students who didn’t want to lose their club’s special funding.
None of this changes unless students get active and stand up to their schools. Fight it on campus, fight it in your statehouse, and fight for your right to use your money how you see fit.
