I got my tax return last week.I went back home for the weekend after a long, hard week of school and work. I’d just read the 100th article about how budget cuts were going to ruin my education, play havoc with my scheduling, slash my instructors, balloon my classes and lessen the value of my degree audit.And there it was, in that bewildering little maze of perforations that is a government check-by-mail. My tax return. I couldn’t help but think of the irony as I opened it. The government that was so strapped for cash that it couldn’t continue to pay for my education was giving me — just straight-up handing me — $82.I realize it’s not that much in the grand scheme of things. But it was just enough for me to wonder what my $82 would have gone to if it had gone to LSU instead of going into my pocket.We’ve heard all about how it happened. We’ve heard all about how Gov. Bobby Jindal and his Hard Tea Partying Legislature slashed taxes with glee in the post-Katrina construction boom and good economic times early in his administration. We’ve heard about how they refused to — and continue to refuse to — reinstate those taxes. Government can’t solve problems, they say. The government needs pruning, they say. They say the government is full of fat and waste, and lean economic times are the perfect time to trim it. It’s true government is sometimes wasteful, and they could in theory be right about all this. But if they are, apparently most of that fat and waste is here at the University. Maybe the fat is those little whiny instructors with their fancy-pants edumacation. Maybe the waste is those unimportant classes seniors are going to need to take to graduate.No? Then why is all of that getting cut?It could be I’m just a naive, starry-eyed college student, but I’ve seen the practical benefits of a state education. Yes, I’ve struggled with the bureaucracy before — I’ve been a student worker, my salary still comes from the state and I’ve had to go through the nightmare of red tape that is hiring paperwork so many times I’m numb to the inanity of it all.But I’ve also reaped the mind-expanding benefits of state-paid professors. And now I’ve personally heard those same professors’ anxiety about whether they’re even going to have a job next semester. That said, it’s all well and good for us to moan about it, but it’s high time somebody got up and did something about it.To put it plainly: It’s time to nut up or shut up. Today SG has given every student the chance to show up in force and make sure legislators are perfectly aware of exactly who the “fat” they’re trimming from government is feeding. Everybody who cares — and that should be most of us — should get up, get on a bus and get a little yelling done.Of course, there’s always the chance our representatives won’t listen. So I’d like to propose something radical to that end. The University should start a program that would allow the general public, including — or especially — students to donate their tax return to saving our higher education. It should definitely be temporary, and it should absolutely be voluntary, but it should be publicly pitched. Such a fund would allow those of us who complain about how unyielding, blindly followed small-government philosophy damages our society to quite literally put our money where our mouths are. It would be an important symbolic gesture even if it doesn’t solve the crisis. I would do it in a heartbeat. My $82 may not be a lot, but it would be my own little contribution to a worthy enterprise. And there’s no more worthy expense than that.Matthew Albright is a 21-year-old mass communication junior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_malbright. ____Contact Matthew Albright at [email protected]