Writings - The News & Observer

The News & Observer

March 8, 2002

Unwise student fee

Edition: Final
Section: Editorial/Opinion
Page: A22

Index Terms:
Letter

Estimated printed pages: 1

Article Text:

It was disappointing to read that the UNC Board of Governors endorsed the creation of yet another student fee on behalf of the UNC Association of Student Governments (news story, March 7). But it is more disappointing that the $1 fee was proposed by an organization charged with representing students, and whose leaders have made incessant proclamations of how out of touch the Board of Governors and General Assembly are with average North Carolina families.

Lack of financing is not the reason student representatives are ineffective. Their downfall is the lack of vision that comes from inbred student leadership.

Creating a fee to fund ASG has been considered many times before, but never put forth as a viable solution because the organization's past leaders recognized the inherent hypocrisy of adding yet another financial burden to overcharged students and their families. The association has now not only legitimized the university "pay-to-play" financing model, it has shredded the small amount of credibility it possessed to establish a student bureaucracy doomed to the same ineffectiveness bedeviling its shortsighted leaders.

T. Greg Doucette

Raleigh

(The writer is a former president pro tem of the N.C. State University Student Senate.)

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