It’s absolutely hilarious how low the university will stoop to get students to claim that Ames is their home. What’s worse is that we’re given an “opportunity” to help out our poor community. Ames itself is giving incentives to do so also.

The goal of Ames and Iowa State is to get the population registered sufficiently above 50,000. What that does is categorize Ames as “metropolitan.” You can’t get the game Cribbage from any store in Ames, and they want to classify this place as metropolitan?

The university itself is estimated to be spending approximately $15,000 in advertising. Can’t this money go to a better cause, like more salt on these lethal deathtraps we call sidewalks.

How much is the city of Ames spending on these “gifts” and “prizes”? Sounds like a bribe to me. How much is your vote worth? You can see Ames city employees passing out flyers around Campustown on how you can sell yourself.

Why is it that when Iowa State and Ames need money, the students get shafted? How about spending some of that federal money on things students need, like less loans and more grants.

If you’re like me and are a current resident of Ames, for educational purposes, vote “no.” I’d like my money to go to things I think are more worthy. We should hold the administration at bay with our votes. Let them come to us and say this is what they want the money for and hold them accountable.

If the university was truly interested in calling Ames our home, they’d make it feel more like home. You out-of-state students know what I’m talking about. How many of you are going to say that Ames is your residence when you don’t qualify for in-state tuition?

Ames is giving us this line that tuition is a state matter and the census is a federal matter. Don’t give me that load. That propaganda may fly in other places, but not here. How many times have you read the “local” paper and seen that the “local” regents are again telling us to bend over for another tuition hike.

Right, just because I speak with an accent doesn’t mean I think with one too. The politics of the census makes me sick. How is it that we can call Ames our home, yet when our bills come from the university they are sent away to our other “homes”?

It’s quite a fascinating story, how many people do you think are in Ames? By my best guess, I’m going to stab at about 30,000 tops. We even have a cop shortage in Ames, isn’t that a joke. Yet we’re metropolitan?

We can’t get real big name bands to come to this great metropolis. I can just see Creed coming to Iowa and saying “Iowa State, where is that at?” Heck, you mention University of Iowa and everybody around the nation goes, “Oh, yeah Big Ten school in Iowa City.” My own family can’t point out Iowa State on a map.

Recognition as a national university is Iowa State’s weakest point. Go to Florida and California and ask people to point out Ames, Iowa on a map and they’re more likely to point north of Boise, Idaho. But of course we’re “residents” so we have to be counted in the census.

I for one am going to fill out every line and put a big question mark where it says residence. For that matter if Iowa State and Ames are willing to build some FREE parking lots on campus where I can park in the morning then I’m willing to sell my soul.

It’s worth it, there’s never a place on this campus where you can park. Not to mention that those DPS nazis are all over your car like a crow on roadkill. They just sit and wait for you to run your 30-minute meter out before creeping to your car with that big grinch-ly look.

Have you seen the fliers around campus looking for more parking nazis? That’s got to be the worst job on campus. Everybody hates your guts and people willing to work as parking nazis have got to feel like scum.

But that’s the endgame, isn’t it? We spend thousands of dollars for a way over-priced education to get a twenty dollar piece of paper that says you’re qualified to work in the real world. All the while, tickets keep most of us broke. I mean, $12, good lord that’s a lot.

Ames is no metropolis. I can’t even get some quality authentic mystery meat hot-dogs from a street corner vendor. That’s what makes a city distinct, it’s small business people that make it more convenient to live there. It’s being able to get to movies while passing the hood and getting some jumbo size chicken wings with Mambo sauce to munch on while you wait in line.

But that’s how politics really work, spend enough money and you make a real “investment” — or was that a bribe?

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Andy Gonzales is a junior in political science from El Paso, Texas. He sold himself a year ago to get in-state tuition.