When something costs more than five times what I was expecting, it bothers me. Like racketeers, Cal State Long Beach recently told approximately 10,000 summer students to pay a forgotten protection fee, or don’t come back in the fall. The latest 30 dead presidents the university sucked out of my wallet came as a total surprise. I feel lucky I wasn’t notified about the bill by a thug named Fat Tony.
The $30 surprise additional summer University Student Union fee sent via e-mail is only part of my concern. Other fees to attend summer session are worth addressing as well. Some seem arbitrary. It’s as if a bean counter is sitting in her or his cubicle thinking, “Time to create a new fee.”
For a one-unit class, my account activity reads like a “Twilight Zone” script. One entry is titled “Summer General” at a $118. I know summer generals can be expensive, and there is a war on, but come on guys. Don’t pay for military activities by levying an officer’s tax on college students.
Next on the list is an $8 charge, also for the “General.” Somebody must have forgotten to gouge me for his cigars on the first “general” fee. Certainly if a general can tax students, the state has its autonomous rights. In its efforts not to be outdone, the “State Univ Fee” rings in at $179. Because of a departmental mea culpa, the class wasn’t accessible online until after the registration deadline, so tack on an unexpected $25 late registration contribution.
It’s reassuring to know my private health policy has been supplemented by a $45 “Stdnt Health Fee,” but my original provider is all-inclusive, with a small deductible. I first thought it was to cover an on-campus emergency, like bleeding profusely from “VISA gash.” The cashier straightened me out by informing me CSULB doesn’t accept VISA.
Midway on the list is a gratuitous $33 “Assoc Stdnt Fee.” I’ve been told that was for Associated Students, Inc. Granted, I’m only on campus once a week, but I haven’t seen these ASI specters once. I suppose I could visit that money in Cancun.
As if I’d be reading my bill while sleep walking, an $8 “Insrt Related Act Fee” was electronically penciled in. My best guess is the “Insrt Related Act” is some kind of law I haven’t heard of to protect the relatives of this mystical “Insrt.”
The slap-in-the-face irony is that the lowest charge on my tab is the original “screw up” charge of $7. Anything under $8 must send a computerized red flag to the cash register.
For that, we receive a threatening letter to fork over an additional $30. What irks me is the knowledge that, if I’m late paying the “oversight,” I’ll be barred from enjoying nearly $2,000 worth of pre-paid fall classes.
Maybe I’m just another whiny student moaning about the high cost of going to college. More likely, I’m pissed by the lack of finesse CSULB employed by its request to “pay up or we’ll break your thumbs.”
The redeeming part of the near Al Capone-like mandate is the ever reassuring, “Currency used is US Dollar.”
Duke Rescola is a senior journalism major and the opinion editor for the Summer Forty-Niner.
