Iowa State, get ready to choke on your mochaccinos. I have some disturbing news to tell you. You may be getting screwed over on your U-Bill by as much as 75 cents. Let’s try to calm ourselves, Iowa State, and not riot until we’ve thought this all the way through.

It seems that printing something out on campus might be a little more expensive than you thought. A friend of mine noticed something odd on her U-Bill: Apparently, after you use your $5 subsidy, when you print something out, there is a $1 minimum charge in certain labs, regardless of the page amount. The reason this is a load of rocks is because nobody told my friend about it until she got her U-Bill. This is completely true.

I think that charging anybody money (even Randy Moss) without telling them is a crummy thing to do, but if you can’t beat them, join them — that’s what I say.

Because the university seems intent on squeezing every last penny from its students, I’ve decided to help them out by introducing some money-making ideas they might not have thought of before. Listen up, ISU financial people, because this is probably the most important thing anybody has told you all day.

My first money-making proposition is putting tollbooths on the sidewalks around campus. The way I see it, if we students have the privilege to walk on paved sidewalks, we should damn well pay for it. We’ll appreciate what we have more if we’re charged for it.

Because Iowa State is full of engineers, people are already shooting my idea full of holes. “Jon,” they are saying, “that will never work! What if people just walk on the grass?”

Don’t worry, though, I’ve got a solution — it is DPS, of course. I propose a special “Sidewalk Division” of DPS, which can liberally distribute $10 fines to those individuals who choose to illegally walk on the grass.

Let’s move on to the highly offensive practice of club sports using the ISU name and unlicensed logos.

The university has cashed in on this, but not nearly as effectively as it could have. Personally, I’m offended any time a group of people gets together here at Iowa State, spend its own time and money to expand university exposure in club sport circles (without benefit of scholarship) and has the audacity to use Iowa State’s logo.

Why stop with club sports, though? Anybody wearing red and yellow together must be taxed. If the university was really thorough, it’d hit up the flora and fauna. The leaves are changing, so anytime a cardinal alights in a yellow tree branch, he should be summarily shot by the “Sidewalk Division” of DPS, which, I forgot to mention, will be carrying airguns.

My finest idea for money making, however, involves simple economics.

The university must take advantage of inelastic good pricing. An inelastic good is something that people will buy even though the price is high for what it is, like popcorn at a movie theater.

I’m not talking about soda at a football game, no, no, no. I’m talking about toilet paper and, more specifically, requiring a handsome amount for it. I don’t know how it works for girls, but we guys charge into the bathroom without too much forethought into the process, except grabbing reading material.

Consequently, we’d probably be willing to pay any amount of money should we find ourselves in a somewhat swampy situation. Seven cents a square seems reasonable, as the university one-ply toilet paper and computer printing paper appear to be one and the same. I haven’t figured out how DPS could enforce this.

Now, in fairness, my friend complained very politely and got the charge removed, so I suppose you can too. But I would start saving money now in case the university actually takes me seriously.