Commentary

Public Interest Farce

The self-penalizing aspects of student fees

Whenever OSPIRG is up for big, big money on the student ballot, the same question always arises: can or should student fees be used to fund something that students may not agree with? The question is generally answered rhetorically, sometimes philosophically, but always in a trifling way. The arguments go like so:

Rhetorically: "The [insert: federal, state, local] government always uses our tax dollars in a way that we may or may not like. Student government is no different."

The problem with this attitude is that, regardless of the outcome, the system is nevertheless unjust. Most students attend college to get some semblance of an education. They recognize that student government is a sham-a popularity contest that works, simply, to render specious experience onto the resumes of those who participate in it. It accomplishes very little as an institution, and that is reflected by the incredibly low voter turnout year after year. Students know what is important to them, and student government is not. The coerced takings of $500 a year in fees should be taken seriously, but because the payment is automatically appended to the UO tuition, most students don't know they even pay fees. Hell, most people think that when they recieve a tax return, the government is giving them money. Surprisingly few even recognize that so much is automatically confiscated from their paychecks. If taxes were not withheld, and you had to write a check out to Uncle Sam or to the UO incidental fee committee each month, I've little doubt that the Libertarian Party would dominate American politics, and that student government would wither away overnight.

Philosophically: "The student incidental fee system is a democratic process that works. Everyone has the right to vote, and if they don't like the outcome, they can become active and try to effect change within the system."

Better. But this argument still assumes that any democratic outcome is just, due to its democratic nature. Democracy is not an end in itself. Majority rule can result in totalitarianism. American democracy, as it works, permits unequal justice under the law. This is evident by the fact that some people pay a lot of taxes, while others pay none. In a student government system, where 15% of the students vote in a really good year (meaning fantastic weather on election day), 700 students could raise the fee to $2000 a year if they saw fit. Is this justice?

Strangely, many ignore a fundamental aspect of the above two questions: what happens if a majority of the students willed themselves to fund an organization that is detrimental to the financial, rather than ideological, well-being of a particular student.

OSPIRG lost funding last year in the student elections. They collected approximately $10 per student per year, or one happy-hour pitcher of Henry's per student per term. Their $150,000 budget made them the second-highest funded program on campus, second only to student government itself. But they lost the campus debate because they could not respond to the idea that student fees should stay on campus. They did not account for their money line-by-line, like every other student organization, and suspicion filled the air as to where their money was going. They could not show how much stayed on campus, and they lost their money. Their opponents used an effective rhetorical argument, and James Carville's non-Marxist twin was smiling.

But OSPIRG opponents never made it a point to address the moral aspect of the problem at hand. The Committee to Re-Establish OSPIRG, a zero-funded student organization that somehow managed to snag a desk in the student government office (which probably has something to do with the student body president is on the Committee), is currently campaigning to end drilling for oil in the Arctic, Exxon, BP, Chevron, and other corporations are seeking to drill the area for (gasp) profits.

Now, whatever you may think about the big oil companies, consider what's going on here. Student fees are being used to halt oil drilling. I certainly don't remember that being in the UO Bulletin as a use for my tuition money when I decided to attend here. Political activities as such have no business being funded by student fees, whether they're in the perceived "public interest" or not.

But that's more of a utilitarian argument. I know a student who, due to invested shares in a mutual fund, owns a tiny little portion of Exxon. It's a tiny portion as far as Exxon is concerned, but for him, a fluctuation in their stock price changes his entire net worth. OSPIRG's tactics, if they go so far as to affect the laws surrounding Arctic drilling, could perceivably diminish Exxon's stock prices and destroy the finances of a student. Timber families-no matter what you think about the timber companies-must have sent their kids here in the past. In so doing, they were funding their own demise.

A justification could be made if the institution were private. But the University is not private. It is public, and my state income taxes go toward its funding. As an Oregon resident, I have a right to utilize it. But OSPIRG, or any other group for that matter, has no right to usufruct my funds toward its "higher good." Such action is, plainly, unethical. But we, as students who study Marx, have learned to accept the ethics of the ruling elite. Anything goes with them. And the minority continues to get stomped on-even though OSPIRG was kicked off the funding rolls last year. We could eliminate the problems by terminating all public institutions as such, but that, that would be politically impossible...

Of course, OSPIRG and the ASUO are not the only culprits here. I had the (dis)pleasure of talking to the executive director of the Oregon Student Association (OSA) last year. OSA nabs about $75,000 a year of our fees, and supposedly lobbies the state legislature for increased funding of higher education. (That's when the legislature is in session. I've no idea why we fund them so much in non-legislative years.) At first sight, they appear to have overcome OSPIRG's inherent problem; increased funding and lower tuition is something that all students benefit from, right? But two years back, OSA lobbied to increase the salaries of UO professors. Tell me how that is in the student interest. I always assumed that students and professors were like miners and foremen, or UPS drivers and middle management. Our interest (lower tuition) is antipodal to their interest (higher salaries). Our fee dollars were used to fund a cockamamie political alliance in the name of improving the quality of higher education and the higher interest. Dubious antics, for sure.

OSPIRG and OSA get away with this scheme under the guise of the "public" interest. After all, who could be against education of the environment? The strategy used by OSPIRG, the ASUO, and OSA is tricking students into joining a special interest in the name of a higher good: a mass movement.

Nazism was a mass movement. And boy did those folks think they were right. Marxist revolutions, which are responsible for more deaths than old age, exemplify mass movements for the public good. But notice the similarity between all of these movements: they all have scapegoats. Jews, Bourgeoisie, and Big Business: AKA Satan, Lucifer, and the devil incarnate. Said Eric Hoffer in his book, The True Believer, "Hatred is the most comprehensive of all unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil." OSPIRG, like Marxism, does not represent the public interest. It is a special interest like any other interest group. And a special interest can benefit only by the fact that the government has the power to arbitrarily dole out favors. This is at the expense of the only real public interest: freedom. If the government had no power over us to begin with, big business, environmentalists, and all other special interests would be at a loss.

So for you and me, the individualists who carry our own weight and want, simply, for the government and everyone else to leave us alone-we can only expect to continue to be stomped on. Your freedom is fleeting, folks. Do something about it.

Jonathan Collegio, a senior majoring in Political Science and Economics, is published of the Oregon Commentator