Students walking through the Free Expression Tunnel to classes each dayare sometimes bombarded with hot chocolate from student organizations inaddition to unaffiliated salespeople handing out bright flyers.

While the former can lead to a more comforting stride to that dreadedearly morning class, the latter has the great ability to coerce studentsinto the even more feared situation known as credit card debt.

Beverly Blow, attorney for University Student Legal Services, said moststudents find themselves in credit card debt mainly due to too muchspending, too much partying and attempting to finance college throughcredit cards.

Blow said another mistake students make that forces them into debt iscutting out health insurance under the false conclusion that it is savingmoney. However, she said students are not invincible and sometimesunforeseen accidents do happen.

“The medical bills can be enormous,” Blow said.

According to Blow, bad credit can prevent students from obtainingnecessary goods later in life, such as buying cars or procuring houses.

“When you come out with a large amount of debt, it’s going to make itdifficult for you to get additional credit,” she said.

Blow offered some ways to manage and avoid credit card debt.

Blow said creating a budget is essential to managing credit cardssuccessfully. She said students should always make the minimum monthlypayments to at least maintain the debt amount.

“If you can at least do that until you complete your school work, then youget a job and then maybe, hopefully, get in a better financial position tomake larger payments,” she said.

Blow said she considers the fact that her mother’s generation, who grew upin the Great Depression, never really experienced serious credit carddebt. She said everyone learned the value of money during thosehistorical hard times.

Blow said she thinks people growing up now tend to be less conscious ofmoney.

“You feel like you have to have the iPod and the cell phone and all thosethings,” she said. “There are so many attractive consumer goods out therethat people can’t imagine life without.”

Cherie Fontanilla, a freshman in First Year College, echoed Blow’s statement.

“I think our generation is far worse. There are so many commodities outthere and all the prices have increased as opposed to a decade ago,” shesaid. “This is why credit cards are becoming the main means forpaying for stuff.”

Holland Killian, a freshman in biological sciences, said she believesher parents’ generation probably had a tough time with credit cards too.However, she said students attempting to be financially responsible intoday’s society are sometimes flooded with more forms of persuasion thanprevious generations experienced.

“There is a lot more temptation [now] with ads,” Killian said.

Students reflected on the strife facing their generation.

Fontanilla said she thinks one reason students sink into debt reflectsmainly on their inexperience with financial matters.

“We’re in the process of learning how to deal with our expenses, andsometimes it can get out of hand,” she said. “Some of us have never had acredit card before [college], so we don’t really know what we’re gettinginto.”

Killian said she thinks the reason students have such a difficult timemanaging credit cards stems from their underdeveloped perspectives.

“They don’t have perspective on that it’s not free money,” she said.”You’ll have to pay it back eventually.”