Commentary

A Cardful of Dollars?

Convenience is your only god.

Don't be fooled: just because you're trading $3700 ($13,000 if you're from out of state) per year to better your mind (or failing that, get a better paying job), don't think your beloved future alma mater is content with that alone. You'll soon find that the University of Oregon and its partner in crime, the City of Eugene, will find, any way it can, to bilk you out of every last cent. If the Minor in Possession citation doesn't get you, then the Incidental Fee will.

And the more expediently you (or let's be honest, kids) give it up, the better, right?

Whether you're one student among the masses or a state-run facility of higher education, convenience is the name of the game. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence, which I won't waste your time with too much of. To wit: The technological godsends of calculators, microwaves, and worldwide computer networks save us from the most subservient of degradations that can be thrust upon a modern American: grunt work. I.e. as far as I can tell, my parents and their friends haven't been to Fred Meyer in months; they order their groceries online.

Another significant, perhaps more relevant example is the prevalence of credit and debit cards. These services save the average consumer from the trivialities of carrying cash, making the annoyance that is change, and finding places to put it.

College students, the laziest people I know, invariably carry plastic of one kind or another.

Starting last January, a new incarnation of plastic currency landed at the University of Oregon. At a total cost of $200,000, the fledgling program debuted with the simultaneous completion of the Erb Memorial Union's drawn-out renovation, and to no little fanfare. The Oregon Daily Emerald, ever the provider of free publicity, ran several articles and an editorial.

Campus Cash, if you don't know (and many don't), is the University's newly installed debit card system, specifically intended for use in the Erb Memorial Union, but accepted at the Willamette Hall's Atrium, among other places.

The Administrative press release in the January 8th News & Views went like so: "You have half an hour for lunch, so you rush to the EMU for a quick snack only to find there's nothing but lint and old copper pennies in the bottom of your fanny pack. There's no time to go to the ATM and you're out of checks. But, wait! There is your UO Card... as good as cash at the EMU and other campus eateries, provided you open a Campus Cash account at the EMU. And you were wondering what those magnetic strips on the back of your ID card were for!"

The program, eagerly anticipated at first, simply failed to catch fire with its target audience. Just one month later, it was clear that the fledgling program had fallen far short of expectations. "University officials expected 1,000 students to have signed up for Campus Cash by now, and only 200 students have," the Emerald reported on February 12. Unfortunately for those involved with the project, the aforementioned scenario wasn't nearly as common as predicted.

Closing in on a year later, Campus Cash's prognosis is a little brighter. For the first week this fall, according to UO Card office manager Joel Woodruff, "sales are up over 50% from last [school] year." Currently, 637 students have signed up for the program, with an approximate $30,000 in the system (or about fifty dollars per student). Woodruff attributes this reversal of fortune to the influx of new students. "The main thing has been that we've had a good increase in use of the program with incoming freshmen."

By and large, the University appears to have written off the participation of current UO students, perhaps with sound reason. "You've got folks that are juniors and seniors that are established in their spending habits," he said. "With the new students, you've got more parental involvement as they come to campus for the first time."

This focus on incoming students is a marked change in philosophy from last year, when Campus Cash was advertised as being useful to the then-present student body. "We had a presence at IntroDUCKtion, and we got a really good response to it," he continued. "With the freshman class we sent home a little payment book that hopefully the parents will send money in each month and deposit it.

"When students or parents deposit money into the account, it can only be used in specific locations, so it does capture those dollars to be spent on campus." Available evidence would indicate that this year, parents have embraced this option. Money deposited into the program cannot be spent on luxuries such as CD's, alcohol, movies, or drugs, to name a few, but must instead be spent on life-sustaining Subway sandwiches. Well, something like that. Nevertheless, if not a convenience for parents, it can offer a little peace of mind.

One thing Campus Cash is supposed to do is bring the University one step closer to the hallowed one-card system that any university worth its bell tower has already implemented. What is important to note, and may be a factor in the program's trouble with luring converts, is that while students can indeed use one card for a variety of purposes, the system in place is not a bona fide one-card system.

Instead, the UO ID card is a single card with a host of individual accounts. The bar code below your mug and ID number are used by Housing and the Knight Library, respectively, to keep track of your meal plan and check out books. On the other side, the narrow stripe at the bottom (in card-wonk jargon, the "jumpstripe,") is used by the library for printing services (i.e., the photocopiers "cleverly" named after cartoon characters). The larger stripe above it (to those in the know, the "magstripe,") is used by the Office of Public Safety for building access, for student access to the spanking new Esslinger recreation center, and not least by Campus Cash itself.

Got all that?

What it means in the real world is that a student who puts $100 into their Campus Cash account is then unable to use that money to make photocopies at the library, though just downstairs in the Daily Grind, they could theoretically buy the entire shop out of stock. A student who carries their money in the conventional method is free to dispose of their income at their discretion.

The incompatibility between these accounts can be frustrating to students expecting more out of it, but the reason for it is not terribly obscure. The Knight Library runs its printing services separately from its own book loan system, both of which are independent of Campus Cash-under the jurisdiction of Woodruff. Likewise, Housing's meal plan is overseen by University Housing.

Each department developed and manages its own systems autonomously, and there are no extant proposals to remedy the confusion of the situation.

The lukewarm response appears at least in part due to students not really seeming to need Campus Cash, or even the convenience that it purports to offer. Most EMU food establishments do not accept debit cards, but the ATM machines thirty feet away most certainly do; cash is still, in ludditic defiance of technological advance advancement, a common method of payment; ad infinitum.

The program's reason for being, Woodruff states, is to provide "a convenience to students." Yet the only students that Campus Cash has thus far attracted are those who are introduced to it at the point of matriculation-essentially, it isn't useful unless you've never known any other way. Does that contradict the definition of convenience? The jury is still out.

Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA is one of many schools with a similar debit card system longstanding. Bulldog Bucks (named, of course, for the school's canine mascot) fill the same alliterative void that Campus Cash does here. Gonzaga's program, unlike our own, is more than a decade old and is quite successful.

Where each program's incongruities lie may explain their disparate states. With a projected 4,500 students on campus, more than 600 (compare the size of Gonzaga to that of the UO and you'll see what I'm getting at) enrolled students prefer the program's accessibility.

Nathan Palmer, student body Event Coordinator (and avid Bulldog Bucks user) described the program's ins and outs. "We can buy books at the bookstore with it. The good thing about that, is when you buy a hundred dollars worth you get ten dollars off, so for every hundred dollars you're getting $110 worth."

This raises two discrepancies, both of which work in the Bulldogs' favor.

Woodruff was quick to acknowledge that "the biggest issue with the incoming students and their parents is that they want to use it in the Bookstore." One would imagine the Bookstore as a highly convenient places for UO students to make use of Campus Cash-though its management was not approached during the program's development. Only now is this beginning to change. "We're planning on having discussions," Woodruff says. "But it's going to take some research in terms of the necessary network connections."

The incentive tactic of the program is not a loss leader that the UO is particularly willing to embrace. "This year we haven't offered any discounts, and we want to stay away from that if possible," Woodruff explains. "Until we establish a good revenue stream, food service would have to pay for those discounts."

Another potentially key difference at Gonzaga: "Every three years, businesses bid for the rights to use the program," Palmer continues. "Domino's and Pizza Time have it right now." Conversely, the UO has no plans to follow suit and incorporate nearby businesses. "There's no outside involvement," says Woodruff. "There hasn't been any discussion other than the Bookstore."

One similarity is that both programs are introduced to students upon arrival. Unlike Campus Cash, Bulldog Bucks are integrated with the meal plan that is mandatory for all freshmen and sophomores in the dorms. "They get $100 [of Bulldog Bucks] with their meal plan. They already all have it," Palmer explained. Upperclassmen are not required to live in the dorms, nor must they purchase a meal plan. By their junior year, when they are free to chose, the majority opt to stay on. "Most of my friends do use it," the senior Business major said. "It's just really, really convenient."

This time around, the University is wisely avoiding any prognostications. "We haven't really set any goals in terms of the number of accounts that we want," Woodruff says. "One thousand is kind of my number. It will be the first milestone, of course, but I'd like to see twenty-five percent of the campus community using it."

The new strategy does seem to be paying off, albeit glacially. However, this year's wave of freshmen are already acquainted with the debit card, and still it has some ground to cover before it meets last January's forecast- much less a quarter of the University population.

So is Campus Cash convenient? The first paragraph of this article alluded (however tenuously) to a sinister plot by the University to seduce you into surrenduring your dollars. This is probably not entirely true, but if it so turns out, I'll let you know.

In any case, Campus Cash has yet to prove its worth, either as extortion or-dare I say it? a convenience to you, the average student. Whether it ever will is open for debate. The University is convinced that one day it will, and indeed it may. But you won't be around to see it.

William Beutler has never used Campus Cash, but might if it worked at Clancy Thurber's