Homecoming Aftermath

In the ongoing rampage I have against the lack of value, I once again ask a money question I know many of you have already asked: why did I just pay for my own homecoming?

Student fees for this semester (at least for me as a tier two student, I don’t really know what tier one costs) is $746. A significant portion of this money is relegate to the Student Government Association and as I have said to various individuals, I consider the SGA a celebrated homecoming committee. Apparently, I must remove the adjective “celebrated.”

I go to no events. I can’t really complain about that. This is a fault on me considering I don’t like many things. Anyone who has read my work knows I complain, so I can’t complain about not going to any events. But when you really think about it, if I had gone to anything, chances are I would have paid for them twice.

I’m not really moved to hear J. Holiday or Lil Wayne, but I’m certainly not moved to pay for them again. I had already made the assumption I paid for them the first time out of my student fees. Since I can assume this didn’t happen because of the copious ten dollars for AUC student tickets (thirty for the fashion show/rap concert), I’m guessing the money went elsewhere. So now I must ask what happened to the budget?

It’s October and I’m on another money tirade. My $107 in technology fees has ensured that I am writing this article on deadline on a bench in front of the Kilgore Center instead of in my room to email this article out since the LAN doesn’t work. My $2,135 dining hall fee ensures my not sitting in the front of the cafeteria on weekends as I would prefer and a coin flip on whether or not I have Caesar dressing with my salad. Now I don’t even know what my student fees are doing.

We have accounting majors (which I consider the most respectable of the business majors). Let’s give them all a new project: audit. Let’s give them all real world skills and have them conduct an audit of the various facilities on campus. Let’s start with the homecoming budget and the allocation of student fees. I think this would be a rather admirable project considering our SGA president is himself a business major. He must be as flabbergasted as I am about this issue (but I would leave him to say that, I don’t want to talk for Mr. Onuoha).

Yet, if there is one thing I feel is a positive attribute of this whole debacle, it’s this: note the tickets for the events had a definitive price for AUC students, not just Morehouse and Spelman. Three weeks ago, our neighbor institution had their homecoming and few of us noted. Having one price for our events spanning the Atlanta University Center inadvertently promotes unity between the respective schools. It says our money is the same as our other brothers and sisters. We all shared this celebration together.

While I’m not particularly happy that I paid for events that needed to be paid for again, I am happy that I got to share the festivities with my neighbors. Bright spots are abound in this place when you look for them.