Students have been in an uproar lately about how their money on campus is spent. Whether it is WUFIP, the Living Wage referendum or Associated Students of Madison elections, students at UW-Madison are careful to track where each cent of their precious segregated fees will be distributed.
While I agree that it is important to care how organizations are spending one's contributions, I have to wonder if students keep track of every single dollar they personally spend in a week, a month or a semester.
If one would add up the average alcohol, travel and entertainment expenditures of Joe Student\ during a semester, it would top out at more than the $662 of seg fees proposed by ASM for this 2005-'06 school year. Yet, students are not in as much distress over their private over-the-top expenses.
Spring break alone probably cost more than seg fee payments for many students. They have no qualms in dropping $600-plus on a trip to Cancun or Fort Lauderdale, not to mention the several hundred dollars spent on fake tans, designer beach wear and fines for having sex in public.
Even a Badger football Saturday can get pricey. Factor in a few kegs, some hard liquor, several dozen brats, charcoal, lighter fluid, game tickets, replica jerseys and some underage drinking tickets, and you will be spending quite a lot from your part-time pay check at a non-livable wage.
But large spending is not just limited to special occasions. Do all students bring out their pocket-sized budget notebooks and pencils to jot down the multitude of cash transactions that occur from alcohol and bar-time food while imbibing each weekend?
I highly doubt it. Even if they did, the math would most likely be incoherent, for the ledger has been smudged with pint glass condensation rings. Chances are even more undergraduates are still shame-faced members of the ""My Mommy Does My Taxes"" club (myself included).
With the excuses of youthful exuberance and inexperience aside, there are other contributing factors to this UW-Madison student financial calamity. We did not spend time in high school taking personal finance classes and learning practical math. We were the ""smart"" kids who were too busy with ""important"" math classes such as advanced trigonometry and AP Calculus.
Now we find out all too late that calculating angles and lengthy derivatives may aid in balancing the foundation of a building, but they will not help you balance a budget.
While some UW-Madison students may be incredibly book smart, they are definitely not the most crisp bills in the cash drawer when it comes to money sense.
The Student Services Finance Committee and ASM cannot help their financial quandaries and handicaps, for they are simply students like the rest of us.
Thus stems the double standard of student spending. We extensively blow our own cash without regard, yet we find it abhorrent when others do so. I can barely force myself to loan my close friends five dollars. Therefore, like many students, I certainly have my reservations about trusting a committee of my peers to wisely spend $662 of my money.
Seg fees are incredibly steep and students deserve to know that their funds are being spent in a practical manner before blindly forking over more money for new initiatives.
Likewise, as we enter into a tumultuous new era of student government wrought with cancelled elections and impending takeovers, students must choose wisely the representation that will best serve their financial interests.
Bottom line: No one likes it when other people spend their money. But until students can be fiscally responsible in their own lives, they cannot justifiably become livid at the transaction transgressions of the student governing body chosen to represent them.
Kelly Schlicht is a sophomore majoring in journalism. Send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.\
