The Board of Regents is preparing to lay the smack down on the students of Iowa’s public universities once again. A tuition hike of nearly 20 percent is in the works, following the nearly 20 percent hike last year.

Students are angry, upset, agitated, livid, outraged, worried and disgusted.

We should unite as one. We should organize and let the board hear our voices as one. We should protest on campus. We need to make it clear that we will not stand back and be taken advantage of like this.

But we won’t.

We won’t organize, or protest, or even unite, really. There will be a smattering of vocal critics and a few columns such as this one, and GSB will promise to fight against the hike (it won’t matter, but they’ll promise to do it all the same). Otherwise, the only sign of protest you will see from the student body is that low murmur of 25,000 students.

Between tuition and the ever-ominous “student fees,” even students who are Iowa residents will be shelling out more than $900 more than they were this year. Some argue that $900 really isn’t all that much. Just cut back on all the extravagances of college life – food, water, overpriced science textbooks -and you can make up that money in a hurry.

But there are definitely students among us who may not be able to swing this and, thus, will leave this pristine campus in the spring never to return again.

Good ol’ public education.

And there are thousands more who will really feel the pinch of a tighter budget. They will have to take out more loans, work more hours or further burden their families.

What about the population of married students? There are families in which both Mom and Dad attend Iowa State. Often, these are young people who have already found who they are looking for and started a family (intentionally or accidentally).

Now, they have to try and scrape together $2,000 more just to follow this path they have charted.

The worst part is the board realizes they can up the tuition and the students will return. If they believed that this hike would severely reduce the student populations, they would find some other way to raise the money.

But they know all the reasons people have problems saying good-bye to Iowa State.

What are your options?

Transfer to another school. Maybe all of your credits will transfer, but probably not. Most large universities also have a requirement stating you have to take your last 32, 48, 60 credits at their place. So, transfer, but then go to school for a year or two more than you would have needed to. I don’t think so.

Of course, you could always transfer to a community college. But I’m led to believe that if you wanted to go to a community college, you wouldn’t be here in the first place.

Give up. Well, the only flaw with this plan is all those hopes, dreams and plans you have made in the last ten years. Believe it or not, one cannot become a mechanical engineer without a degree. However, you probably could work in a flower shop or department store.

Finally, you could take some time off, and wait for tuition to drop.

But you’ll stay here regardless. Tuition could go up 64 percent next year, and enrollment would only drop a couple thousand. We are all locked into this amazing institution, for better or for worse.

That’s why we should develop a contract. We could call it the “Student-University Contract.” The student agrees to be law-abiding, hard working, and get out of here in four years.

In return, the university sets a cap on tuition increases for that student. This way we could actually plan how much money we will need to get through four years here. If the student can’t graduate in four years, then he or she will be shifted to the real tuition for the remainder of his or her stay here.

They would also owe the university back pay for all the discounted semesters they had.

The bottom line is the students have a little more motivation and the university can have tuition raise 83.76 percent or whatever for incoming freshmen.

Just as long as we don’t have to suffer.

Dustin

Kass

is a junior in journalism

and mass communication from Dubuque.