Kanye West shops so much he can speak Italian.
The morning was bleary with students clambering out of bed, walking over to CC’s in Middleton Library where I work and ordering breakfast sandwiches and vanilla lattés.
“$8.62,” I constantly called out.”$4.28,” I constantly called out.”$7.32,” I constantly called out.
And time and time again, I was handed a Tiger Card, now with a really neat third way to hold money on it (as a credit card), and rang up Tiger Cash and Paw Points. As I did, I saw the remaining balances on each of the cards – “$232.45,” “$342.78,” “$186.89.”
It is frightening to think University students are learning anything about money management by the one thing that identifies them as a University student.
This is the same University that forces some of its students to buy their food through meal plans, and those plans help jack up the cards with ridiculous balances such as $300 in Paw Points.
Many students’ first introduction to the University includes this card with this much money on it. They have an endless flow of cash to purchase sustenance with. They are tricked into a mindset of having a perpetual pit of money, and the day they run out will be a day indeed.
The University certainly has no obligation to force its students to learn proper money handling techniques. On the other hand, it should have no obligation and no right to force students to buy its version of money – but it does.
Kanye West shops so much he can speak Italian, he says on his new album.
And for all I know this might actually be true, but in his hyperbole is the problem University students – especially freshmen – face.
Most 18-year-olds don’t have the best notions of fiscal responsibility, especially now with the idea of material goods taking reign over basically anything else. Our pop culture heralds shopping to the point of speaking Italian. It loves bling, drugs, cash, guns, cars and sex (which tend to be gained through the power of money in pop culture). This much is obvious.
But with a pop culture so supersaturated with the idea that money is easy to come by and important to have and even more important to spend, institutions such as the University should take the likelihood of immaturity into account.
By forcing students to buy, in lump sums, a well of money that can only be used in one way is strangely communistic but also a detriment to all of these students. I know I used all of my Paw Points in the first two months of school when I was a freshman, switching then and only then to dining in the luxurious cafeterias around the school.
It seems that most students do this, and the University creates the situations itself. Without being forced, far less students would probably buy Paw Points and Tiger Cash, so far less students would recklessly spend money, so far less students would end up penniless or in debt later in life.
But hey, the University doesn’t care.
It’s no skin off the back of a multi-billion dollar institution.
It’s shopped so much it doesn’t just speak Italian – it teaches the class too.
—-Contact Travis Andrews at [email protected]
University advocates the Italian of Paw Points
September 27, 2007
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