This past week I had the opportunity to go home and spend some quality time with my family. I was surprised to see my younger brother walk out to greet me with his freshly dyed blonde hair.

I started making fun of the Real Slim Shady because, to put it bluntly, he looked ridiculous. Then the hand of god slapped me and I realized this has no effect on my life so I should let it go. Many of us are guilty of criticizing things that don’t affect us. I offer the following examples.

Example No. 1: The proposed renovation plan to Jack Trice Stadium. Thank you to these donors who are providing us with an answer to the question, “If you have way too much money, what do you spend it on?”

Sure, it would be nice to have separate practice facilities for the basketball teams, but it isn’t exactly high priority. A horseshoe around the lower south part of the stadium would look pretty cool, but scoring a ticket to an ISU football game hasn’t exactly been difficult these past few decades.

But before you get ready to shake your fist at this project, consider the following. This isn’t going to be paid for by increased ticket prices. It’s going to be paid for by those wild and crazy donors. So while it may not be my personal renovation plan of choice, I really don’t care. I’m not going to have to pay for it; it’s not really hurting me, and while it is taking away half of our hillside seats, a horseshoe will look nice, too.

If I had money to give to Iowa State, it wouldn’t be going to this project, but if the donors want to spend their money on it, go for it. It’s not like a donor came forward and wanted to give $5 million dollars to help out undergraduate education until Gene Smith pulled them aside and whispered sweet nothings of a closer parking spot. They want to donate their money to something that looks cool. So great, knock yourselves out.

I wouldn’t have donated to the cause, but when (OK, if) I have the money I can decide for myself which unnecessary projects I want my name on. God bless America.

Example No. 2: The Government of the Student Body hat bill. If there is one criticism I can’t take from this past year it is references to the hat bill. For some reason, people seem to think that this was the crowning achievement of the year or that this is representative of GSB’s priorities.

You know how much time the senate spent on it? About 15 minutes. Then they decided it was stupid and voted the thing down. It only took me about 15 seconds to decide the same thing, but that’s why I was the president.

The author, Jeremy Peterson, believed that hats should be removed while inside out of respect for others. Couple that with the fact that GSB holds its senate meetings in the Memorial Union, a building created in honor of fallen soldiers, and he thought it would be proper for hats to be removed during senate meetings.

Like Charlie Sheen, this item was quickly placed on the B-list. It was one of those issues that didn’t really need a lot of attention, and everybody pretty much knew how the vote would turn out. Still, it received close to the same amount of campus attention as Veishea, tuition and the petition.

Worse, everybody seemed to want to point out what most of us already thought — the bill was stupid. But what if it did pass? What is the big deal? I doubt some extremely gifted and qualified representative would resign from the senate due to the fact they can no longer wear hats. If the senate wants to ban hats at its meetings, senators can go ahead. Second, this was not the highlight of that night, much less the year.

No one decided that we couldn’t discuss rising tuition levels because we have this hat bill coming up. If these people decide that they want to spend an additional 15 minutes of their Wednesday night talking about this, why do we care?

I hope the moral of the story is clear. I’m not telling people to stop caring or be quiet when there is something going on that they don’t like. But we need to check and see how we personally are going to be affected by these things, because while it may not be the best thing, is it really the biggest?

Matt Craft is a senior in secondary education from La Porte City.