Everywhere ISU students turn these days, they find their living costs rising precipitously, while the service they get for that cost diminishes or remains the same.

Tuition has increased more than 40 percent in the past two years and another 8 percent increase is slated for next year, while classes and services are being cut across the board. The cost of ISU Dining meal plans has been raised several hundred dollars this past year to fund a new dining center that offers the same food and same congestion offered under the old plans, only in a sparkling new building.

And if all that isn’t enough, ISU Dining recently raised the price of 20-ounce beverages in campus vending machines from $1 to $1.25.

This price increase, initiated to “keep pace with expenses,” according to ISU Dining director Jon Lewis, is unfair to students. Through an exclusive contract with Coca-Cola, the university has made its students a captive pool of consumers with little choice outside of Coke products offered in vending machines. Because students spend much of their time on campus and are isolated from off-campus services during that time, Iowa State and Coca-Cola effectively have a monopoly unaffected by the prices of the same products elsewhere. With this monopoly comes the freedom to set prices at whatever they want. Students are thus given two choices: drink excessively expensive Coke products or tap water.

This new price of $1.25 is among the most expensive in Ames; the same bottles of Diet Coke, Sprite, Dasani and all the rest can be found across town at Target for 36 cents less. Most retailers in Ames offer Coke products for significantly cheaper than $1.25 as well.

Students should stand up to this monopoly. Iowa State’s contract with Coke is up for renewal at the end of the year. Between now and then students should boycott on-campus vending machines and their excessive prices. We should instead purchase our beverages in bulk from Target or Wal-Mart and come to campus prepared to quench our own thirsts.

We should boycott on-campus vending machines until the university agrees to allow other beverage suppliers — Pepsi or American Bottling or both — to compete with Coke. Allowing two or three suppliers would not only increase beverage options for students, but would also drive down prices as suppliers would fight to attract consumers.

As college students, we have enough financial difficulty in our lives; the last thing we need is our university and a multi-national corporation forming a monopoly and fixing prices of the only beverages available to us far above market value.