I applaud the Emerald for sponsoring a debate on the legitimacy of the student incidental fee, especially on the eve of another election season in which OSPIRG is asking for another outrageous sum of money. However, there are many faults of the pro-fee argument that anti-fee Lisa Marie Catto didn’t have the space to explain in her excellent Feb. 7 commentary (“Money down the drain”).
In the counterpoint Feb. 9 column (“Free speech is for everyone”), pro-fee Jessica Blanchard cites Alexis de Tocqueville’s fear of the “tyranny of the majority” in justifying incidental fees — if the majority doesn’t want to pay for it, those voices will be silent, she argues. However, she misses an obvious point: A majority isn’t necessary for students to participate in programs, just enough support that individual students will contribute their own time and money. The majority need not be disturbed.
Secondly, Blanchard should consider another tyranny: “of the minority,” about which James Madison warned in the Federalist 10. (Of course, he was in favor of a limited government, a virtue all but lost in today’s society.) Just as Madison feared that a numerically insignificant faction could wrest political control from the masses, the ASUO is controlled by a small faction of liberal resumé-padding policy wonks play-acting at small government — and not a few of us find this offensive.
Why should you subsidize their extracurricular activities? Do they subsidize your Friday afternoons at Rennie’s? When student leaders extol the virtues of “student control over student fees,” what they are really celebrating is their right to control your money.
ASUO leaders are well known for complaining about rising tuition, but rarely will they admit that it is their bureaucratic microcosm that makes it so much more expensive to attend the University. Students here pay $500 per year in incidental fees — no trivial matter when you consider that students at Lane Community College pay one-twentieth of that per annum.
Students should be able to attend this university without a tyrannical minority confiscating their money and being told it’s in their best interest. How do they know what your best interest is?
James Madison believed that a government was legitimate so long as it had the “consent of the governed.” Do they have your consent?