David Michael Miller
Scott Walker says he wants to help students save money on college. So in his budget, the governor has included a provision that allows them to opt out of paying student activity fees.
On the UW-Madison campus, that means students would no longer have to pay $88.98 per semester — the lion’s share of which goes to fund student government and to pay for bus passes that allow registered UW students to ride the Madison Metro bus for free.
The upside is, students would have an extra 89 bucks and more “freedom to choose.” The downside is, “Allowing individual students to opt out of paying would destabilize funding of these services,” explains Graham Pearce, UW System student representatives chairman.
Services students currently take for granted might just go away. Madison Metro would lose millions of dollars in funding, and could make up the difference by reducing rides on some routes. Student government would face a shortfall, and programs from religious clubs to the campus radio station to the Women’s Center to the Adventure Learning Program would face cuts.
The cost savings to people who no longer have to pay fees is nothing compared with the loss to the whole community when the system everyone relied on begins to break down.
It’s kind of like “Right to Work,” which “frees” individual workers from paying union dues, so that there is no longer a large pool of workers who jointly fund union representation. Presto — no more contracts that protect overtime.
Or the Republican alternative to the Affordable Care Act, which gives people “access” to the private market, and relieves the healthy of the obligation to pay into an insurance system so there’s enough money to cover the old and the sick.
In fact, Walker’s student fees gambit is the perfect illustration of the Republicans’ “go it alone” approach. From labor unions to health care to school vouchers, Republicans oppose communal efforts where we all put in money to do something as a group that most of us can’t afford to do on our own.
According to Walker and his GOP allies, individuals have a “right” not to help pay for things they don’t like.
It helps to have a scapegoat.
Explaining his fees scheme, Walker pointed to Sex Out Loud, a student group that promotes sex education and activism — one of 16 programs in the general student services fund that get part of the student fees allocation.
In truth, Sex Out Loud is small potatoes — about 1 percent of the $89 bucks — or 89 cents per student per term. Seems like hanging onto free bus rides and the radio station is a pretty good trade, even if you don’t like people talking openly about sex.
But the point of this exercise is not just to defund sex ed (though that’s a Walker priority, too). It’s really to promote individualism over community, and to unwind public services and the whole idea of the public good.
That’s why, in Walker’s budget proposal, payments to voucher operators are at least $1,000 higher per student than the average for public school students.
And while Walker is proposing an increase in education funds for Wisconsin’s K12 students (which will supposedly be paid for by switching to self-insurance for state employees) and a tuition break at UW, these measures don’t make up for years of huge cuts to education funding and the tuition hikes Walker supported in the past.
UW students now carry nearly $29,000 in average student debt. And Walker is inclined to leave them to the tender mercies of the private market instead of allowing them to refinance that debt like homeowners refinance their mortgages.
The future of our public school system is even more bleak. After 25 years of a voucher school “experiment” in Milwaukee that failed to improve outcomes for students, the Walker administration is going all in on vouchers and charters, siphoning taxpayers’ money into private school “choice” programs.
We have a great university system, a great public school system and some of the best health care providers in the country right here in town. Instead of setting up a system where individuals have to scramble and compete to get a shred of these goods, we ought to be supporting the infrastructure we’ve got for everyone — so we can all share the benefits of a healthy community, an educated and healthy population, and a nice place to live.
Ruth Conniff is editor in chief of The Progressive magazine.
