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St. Cloud State University
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Take a stand
By Gordie Loewen
Published:
Thursday, October 17, 2002
Gordie Loewen -- Guest Column
Hello again everyone.�I, like most of the people around me have been watching a lot of Twins' baseball recently and it has made me realize a few simple things.�
First off, I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there that didn't pay much attention to the Twins for the first half of the season and paid almost no attention to the Twins at all last season. Very little of that matters though because we're all watching them now.�
This brings up a very interesting point about why we do the things we do.�We, as Minnesotans, have all found something that we can get behind and be proud of in the Twins. I know to a lot of you this seems sad. In fact, anyone who knows me would tell you that I would probably be the first person to label this phenomenon as pathetic.�The point is though, as humans we are only prone to call attention to something when things are really good or really bad.�
How many times have you walked in to a restaurant and said, "It smells so good in here."?�Or how many times has someone handed you that old gallon of milk after smelling it and said, "Here smell this; its rancid."? My point here is, has anyone ever handed you that gallon of milk and said, "This smells like it's going to go bad if we don't do something about it."?
We need to start making that statement a whole lot more.�The last few years have seen relatively well-funded and balanced budgets in the state of Minnesota.�Somehow, though, we still managed to raise tuition almost 30 percent in the last two years. Now, as we move in to what looks like two to three years of budget shortfalls, we need to say, "This is only going to get worse; how do we stop it?"�
The big question we are now faced with is how to actually stop the trend of skyrocketing tuition.�Step one is to take a proactive stance on everything. Students can no longer afford to sit back and let their paths be decided by the current political fancy.
In any other year all I could tell you to do is to write your state and federal legislators and to attend MSUSA's annual lobby day.�Thankfully though, this isn't any other year.�This is an election year.�Gov. Ventura was elected with around 700,000 votes.�There are over 300,000 students of voting age in this state right now.� Think of the impact that we as students can have on the politics of the state of Minnesota.�We can do much more than just voting too.�Tell everyone that you talk to about the problems that students have paying for college.�Write to your legislators and make sure that students' issues never leave the top of their agenda. Do anything you can to raise awareness of the burden that our society expects students to bear in order to get an education.
We cannot wait until a half of our students can no longer afford an education to stand up.�So take action and remember that there are bad people in the world but they should be feared no more than indifference and apathy in the good.
