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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (March 30, 1998)
CONTACTING US NEWSROOM: ADDRESS: (541)346-5511 Oregon Daity Emerald E-MAIL P.O.BOX 3159 ode@oregon uoregonedu Eugene, Oregon 974C3 ONLINE EDITION: www uoregon.edur-ode Perspectives EDITOR IN CHIEF Sarah Kickler editorial editor Mike Schmierbach NIGHT EDITOR Sarah Kickler Matriculation fee could be unfair Proposals for a one-time administrative fee could create financial difficulties for some students and unfairly subsidize others Some people carry hundreds of dollars around in their wallets. For them, the in convenience of getting money outweighs the increased security and interest of a bank, as well as the temptation to spend money that comes with having money. The rest of us go to the ATM. University administrators want to Fill their wallets with hundreds of student dollars at once, rather than collecting the money over the course of a student’s academic career. Just as keeping all your money in a wallet or under the mattress is convenient but poorly thought out, this new proposal doesn’t make a lot of sense. According to James Buch, associate vice president for Student Academic Affairs, the administration is considering a one-time ma triculation fee that would replace the cost of some administrative services (ODE, March 16). The fee could cover IntroDUCKtion, tran scripts, degree application and add-drop penalties. Exactly which of those services might be covered remains to be determined, as do sever al other aspects of the proposal. This lack of clarity, while understandable, is one of our concerns about the idea. While setting a fee for entering freshmen who will take four years to complete their schooling might be a simple enough matter, ac counting for the variety of enrolled students at the University is far more complex. Some stu dents take fewer or more years to finish their education, others transfer experience and cred its from another school, and still others will AN EMERALD EDITORIAL not complete their education at the University. All of these factors, as well as currently en rolled students, would have to be accounted for under a one-time fee system. We find it dif ficult to believe this could be achieved simply or equitably. Equity is a significant concern for us. We suspect a single matriculation fee would prove to be unfair not only to those students who en ter the University in an atypical manner, but for all students. If the fee covered such costs as transcript fees and add-drop penalties, it would violate the point of instituting such fees originally. Transcript fees are meant to reflect the materi als and labor required to produce an official transcript. Those costs vary dramatically from student to student because different students need very different numbers of transcripts. There is no reason the average student should subsidize the 20 to 30 transcripts needed by those applying to graduate schools. Similarly, the entire student body should not have to pay the penalty inflicted upon individ ual students by add-drop fees. The fees are in place to discourage students from dropping classes late in the term because of the inconve nience and educational harm. Spreading those fees to students who never drop classes late in the term is unreasonable. The University may only charge a fee for ori entation costs. Currently, according to Buch, students who pay to attend IntroDUCKtion subsidize other orientation programs. If this is true, it should be resolved by altering orienta tion fees. Charging a universal orientation fee would also be unfair. Students use different orientation programs by choice. IntroDUCKtion clearly includes a large number of services, many of them orient ed toward first-time college students. Those in coming students who don’t opt to attend Intro DUCKtion frequently do so because they don’t need those services or aren’t inclined to pay for them. The ability to pay is also a significant issue. A one-time fee could cost $250. As ASUO Vice President Ben Unger pointed out, that’s a lot of money for many students. Some of that cost may be off-set, however. The administration insists that a one-time fee could be covered by financial aid. Perhaps that claim is true, but it simply means aid that could have been used for tu ition costs will instead go to pay an unfair ad ministrative fee. The cost would still be unrea sonably high. For many students at the University, finding funding is a difficult task managed from term to term. These students often deliberately bud get around administrative costs and avoid fees and expensive programs such as IntroDUCK tion. These students would have difficulty budgeting and raising the high initial fee. There are certainly times when universal fees and shared costs are called for, both in the University system and society as a whole. However, the majority of administrative fees that might be covered by a matriculation fee do not fall into this category. Students should get to leave their money in the bank, rather than in administrators’ wal lets, until the students decide they want to in cur certain costs. This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald editorial board. Responses may be sent to ode@oregon.uoregon.edu LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Williams rethinks rhetoric An erstwhile teacher, I am al ways interested in helping people learn to think and write well. It is therefore with pride that I read Bar ry Williams’ letter (ODE, March 9) chastising me for having chal lenged his idea that “homosexual behavior is unnatural,” part of an “absurd, perverse movement” or chestrated by “liberal propagan da.” My response to Williams’ ini tial ill-considered polemic (ODE, Feb. 25) has yielded tangible re sults in the quality of Williams’ prose, demonstrable to anyone who compares his two letters. Gone is the original letter’s clum sy pseudo-biology as evidence (Williams’ crude reduction of homo sexuality to “the wrong devices in the wrong locations"); squelched, too, are the ghoulish predictions of imminent death and eternal suffer ing for sinners, rendered in the hoari est cliche (“abomination,” “the bondage of sin”) that evoked the comical-pathetic spectacle of the “prophet” on his soapbox. Absent, too, are the stylistic pit falls of the novice writer — the co pious exclamation points and over reliance on a rhetorical question that marred his earlier effort. These are welcome changes. Instead, letter No. 2 reveals the new and vastly improved Williams letter-writing persona — he of the identifiable thesis and well-rea soned argument, coolly exploiting seeming weaknesses in my earlier letter and demonstrating a service able rhetorical style and coherent main claim. The assertions in letter No. 2 are OCA party-line perfect, with their steely intimation of holy war waged signature by signature, part of a mission, as Williams char acterizes it, “to engage ... change agents in a public dialogue and con tend for the character of our society through our legislatures and the ini tiative process.” I’m not sure that Williams’ self-portrait of a former draft-register and organizer of Yippes who has seen the folly of his ways and careened into other en thusiasms is well-considered, but his second letter does make clearer the political stakes of his theological obsessions. For these changes, I give us both high marks: Kudos to Williams for the miraculous transformation of his prose and to me for having in spired it. Brian Whaley * Graduate student Drawing Board Ill Thumbs A TO PEPSI CHAIR MAN ROGER ENRICO: PepsiCo Inc.'s leader is setting a good example for the rest of corpo rate America by waiving his salary and putting the money into schol arships for the company's employ ees. Whiie Enrico could do more— he retains his bonuses, which last year totaled $1.8 million—he is sac rificing a $900,000 salary for an ad mirable cause. Oth- j er corporate execu tives could learn a valuable lesson from this—while business owners make millions and take in massive bonuses for “sav ing money” by fir ing workers, the av erage employee is watching his or her real wage tali. If big business wants support for Its goals, the average American will have to benefit from growth. TO A GEORGIA SCHOOL: Soda sure has been in the news a lot lately. At a high school outside of Atlanta, school offi cials had planned a Coke Day to wel come officials from the Atlanta-based soft drink company as part of a pro gram co-sponsored by the school and Coca-Cola. One stu dent showed up for the festivities wear ing a Pepsi T-shirt. While representa tives of Coke and Pepsi have had a good time making jokes about the in cident, school offi cials weren't amused: they sus pended the 19 year-old senior. This decision had little legal basis and violates the muchr needed right to free speech that stu dents still cling to.
