When we turn 18 years old we are considered to be mature enough to sign a legal contract, to vote for elected officials and to put our life on the line for our country.

After all, when we turn 18 we are adults, right?

Not according to the U.S. Congress. It feels that even after we go off to college, we still need to be treated like junior high students.

Congress passed the Higher Education Act this past month. It reduces the interest rate on federal college loans to its lowest point in 17 years, provides $300 million for improved teacher training and recruitment and gives colleges the right to notify parents when their under-age student commits an alcohol or drug violation.

That’s right, the principal will still be calling your house when you get in trouble at school.

Prior to this, students were protected by a 1974 privacy law.

It stated that universities could not give parents access to their child’s grades. In addition, most universities refrained from notifying parents about criminal offenses as well.

This new provision in the Higher Education Act was sparked by a string of five alcohol-related deaths on a Virginia campus last fall.

So, because some kids in Virginia couldn’t handle themselves, Congress created a blanket of oppression that covers every student across the country.

This is big government at its biggest, folks. In several states, girls are not required to tell their parents if they are going to have an abortion.

Yet parents must know if their young adult gets caught with a beer? Am I the only one who sees the irony?

Yes, I empathize with the families in Virginia. And if that particular school feels the need to implement a new policy of parental notification, that’s fine.

I say let individual schools make these decisions; don’t create a federal law that applies to every campus because of a situation on one.

Let’s look at how this will affect us at ISU.

As if our university doesn’t have its hand in our business enough as it is. We felt the oppression creeping up last year at VEISHEA.

The man won one then, and with this new law it looks like he’s going two for two.

If we allow ISU more power over our private lives, little by little our public university will feel more like a prison.

Does Iowa State need to be butting its nose into its students private family business?

It is a parent’s business and responsibility whether or not to get involved in their kid’s educational experience and college life.

When the university makes a student’s personal business its business, it is crossing a line.

Besides, who’s flipping the bill? That’s right; we are. We will be paying for a new required program that will maintain a public police log of all reported crimes dealing with drinking and drug use.

This log will then be turned into the United States Department of Education annually and made into an annual report for the public. Will ISU have to hire some people to take care of this new program?

Will the 4.5 percent increase in our tuition be paying for that, or will we be hit up for this one next year?

These are times when you need to stand up for yourselves and say “damn the man.”

Do we need to put up with this slow and constant revocation of our rights as adults?

Or the university’s slow and constant bending over of the student population?

It all goes together; they took away out VEISHEA, our destructible goal posts, they want more of our money and now they want to butt into our personal business. Damn the man; damn the man.

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Sarah Leonard is a senior in political science and journalism and mass communication from Lawler.