At last week's Student Finance Board meeting, the College Union Board received more than $16,000 to place a bid for a comedy show modeled upon the popular TV show "Best Week Ever," thanks in part to an increase in the Student Activities Fee.
If the bid is accepted, the show is sure to be a hit here at the College, where the program's snarky humor will find an appreciative audience.
But does the College really need yet another comedy show or concert? With tuition and student fees increasing every year, you think the College would start tightening its belt.
True, concerts and movie nights comprise a very small piece of the College's budget, and all work and no play makes Roscoe a dull boy. But the fact remains that increases in student fees allow the College to make up for budget cuts and loss of funding without raising the tuition ever higher.
College administrators have admirably scrambled to make up for lost funding while doing their best to build on the College's reputation as an up-and-coming institution, a "public Ivy" if you will.
For all the talk of supporting higher education, N.J. legislators continue to demonstrate their lack of concern, slashing funds time and time again.
According to a story in The Star Ledger on Sept. 2, New Jersey's are the only schools in the nation that don't receive state funding for new construction and building maintenance, meaning the money for pile of dirt that will someday be the new Art and IMM Building is coming out of you and your parents' pockets.
We live in a state riddled with debt, yet the property taxes and college tuition rates are some of the highest in the country.
Matthew Golden, College executive director of Public Relations and Communications, was quoted in The Star Ledger as saying, "If we had not built the facilities we did, and relied on the state, we wouldn't have computer labs, we wouldn't have the Internet - our students would be doing their papers on typewriters."
Yet by legislative standards, typewriters are too good here at the College. If left up to the state, we might still be chiseling away on stone tablets, finishing calculus homework with the help of our trusty abacus.
