By now, most students are aware of the tuition increase that is creeping up on students. The Iowa Board of Regents is currently considering making the largest increase to tuition in 20 years.

But it gets worse. The current proposal, after fees, is only about a 13.2 percent increase, but some of the regents think even this won’t be enough and that we could be looking at a 15 percent increase.

The source of the proposed increases, though, is our own state legislature. Apparently they have finally figured out that trying to lower taxes year after year in different areas isn’t the best way to keep the money flowing. The cuts then came to all areas of the budget with higher education being hit hard, and the champion of education, Gov. Tom Vilsack folded faster than Superman on laundry day.

That aside, it’s rather interesting the way the state is forcing schools to raise tuition while at the same time they have been trying to keep students in the state.

Maybe they should take a moment to notice that perhaps students aren’t too keen on paying more money to stick around Iowa. Pushing up the costs of tuition hardly helps attract students from other states either.

Many people think it’s the larger cities that are pulling away the majority of students, and while that’s true to a point, more precisely it is the better paying jobs.

For most students with loans, high paying jobs will be needed just to pay off their loans in a timely manner. If not, students will have to flee the state anyway to hide from the banks and creditors. Either case is a lose-lose situation.

But, it gets worse still. There are those who actually believe that even the suggested increases aren’t enough, and that we as students are getting too close to a “free ride.” That’s an interesting theory I’m sure many students are willing to dispute.

These ideas however, are the big problem we students have to fight against.

It is this vocal minority that manage to get their ideas heard, and cause problems for the rest of us. While we have had campus representatives, organized by GSB and joined by IRHA members, go to the capital and protest the cuts and also try to convince the regents to not raise tuition by such a dramatic rate, we still haven’t been heard.

That’s not saying that GSB didn’t do a good job, but it is easier to ignore a vanload of students than to ignore a majority of the student body.

It’s about time students on campus because more vocal about this issue rather than complaining about it to friends at the Memorial Union. We students have to start writing letters to our congresspersons and let them know just how hurt we are going to be by these increases.

I know the ability to write is out there; nearly every week students manage to get into petty squabbles in the Daily about the spelling of words that don’t amount to anything. I’m sure these same students could take the time to complain about the rate hikes through letters, by joining GBS or helping to mobilize other students to actively participate in stopping the coming tuition increases.

Then again, maybe we deserve these tuition increases. If we can’t find our voice to protest these increases and instead leave it up to our already hard -working representatives, then we should pay more money, because it seems as though we haven’t really learned anything about the real world or what we have to do to prepare for it.

Blaine Moyle is a junior in English from Des Moines.