Rise up my fellow students, and take a stand. With all the grumbling about how crappy things are, you must want to create change.

No? You would rather just complain and magically hope things change? Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but that isn’t going to happen.

I understand no one wants to plan a protest outside in the negative two degrees, but even in the spring the free speech zone usually remains empty, featuring more students wasting time between classes then taking a stand against something, anything.

I don’t see petitions being created, or riots being held — not that I necessarily condone riots. Mostly, people by Parks Library want my lunch money for a cause, which is fine, but it isn’t helping our situation.

Oh wait, there is a Facebook group for your complaint. Yes, because joining a group online and commenting on that will really get the job done, because so many members of Congress browse Facebook while in session. Now you decided to protest by not tweeting for a week. That will show them, I mean what will people do if they can’t read your all inspiring tweets like, “Jersey Shore is on! Snookie is crazy!”

Think everything is hunky-dory? Well, ISU students have a lot to pissed off about.

There is the ever growing cost of going to school here. ISU tuition is rising for both out of state and in-state students year after year. President Geoffroy said to the Government of the Student Body that tuition will most likely go up again; no surprise there.

From 1997 to 2007, total cost of attending Iowa State has increased 71.2 percent, including a tuition and fees hike of 119.1 percent according to GSB on their student debt page.

As of 2008, students in Iowa were ranked number one for having the highest student debt upon graduation, and Iowa State had the highest out of the three public schools with debt averaging around $30,000.

I doubt rising in tuition is helping that debt go down at all. Maybe it’s our goal to have the highest debt in the country; there might be a trophy for it that I don’t know about.

While we keep throwing money for our tuition, it doesn’t seem like it is going to our actual education. Class sizes are getting bigger, with rooms at capacity making it hard for everyone get into the classes they need to graduate. Departments can’t afford to create more classes, they can only add more students to a class and hope there are enough chairs.

Departments can’t afford teaching assistants, which would help the teacher’s growing workload and give the teaching assistants the experience they need for future careers. This means for students it might take longer to know how you did on a paper, or get feedback on what you did wrong on a test.

Teachers in the English department are forgoing phones to save money. Sociology had its budget cut by 40 percent last year. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences might be mushed into smaller categories with the Blue Sky proposal because of seven years of budget cuts that will and have affected hundreds of students, not to mention staff.

We are being charged for an athletic center that not everyone will use, whether they like it or not. The recreation fees for the new state gym — which cost academic students approximately $225 this year — will increase once again by more than 30 percent to $322; we can’t opt out if we don’t want to use the facility. For some students, $300 dollars could pay a semester of books instead of gym membership.

Why can’t students ask if we can set up a plan for the students to pay if they want to use the athletic center, and let the students who won’t use the center off the hook? Kind of like choosing what meal plan you want for ISU Dinning.

Now I know that this is not all the university’s fault. It’s no secret that our government likes to slash public education budget. Iowa State has to try and deal with their funding dwindling while trying to give us a good education.

The proposed Iowa Taxpayer’s First Act will add an additional $3.7 million cut to Iowa State’s budget, along with a $6 million cut to the next fiscal year’s budget and a $6 million surplus cut in the budget for the year after that.

We are only a half an hour away from the capitol. What, apart from gas money, is stopping us from protesting outside there so they know we aren’t going to take it anymore? At the very least we could make a petition to give to legislators to make sure this bill doesn’t pass.

I know one protest will not change everything, but it’s a start. We need to stop complaining and actually do something.

Maybe it’s so ingrained in our heads that as students we don’t make a difference, or that our voice doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s that we are too busy with school and work to care. Maybe we simply just don’t think we have enough information to make a difference. Some of us might not know how legislation works to try and change the system. But should that stop us from trying at all?

We have the first amendment for a reason, so can we use it. If we don’t do anything, more than likely it won’t stop.