By Chadd Garcia and Shannyn Smyth
Arizona Daily Wildcat
November 7, 1997

Enivision a privitized student union

Editor:

"Envision It". Eighty dollars a year gone from your wallet. An absurdity? Certainly. It has a name and it's called the "funding mechanism" for the new $70 million Student Union. The fact that we need a new union is indisputable, but who will pay?

The word from our stalwart ASUA representatives is that if we don't cover the cost through the student fee, the Regents will raise tuition to cover the costs. This fallacious statement comes from the same people who sold us out on the IIF building for a new Escort Service van. Regents must raise tuition uniformly for all three state universities and have special hearings to do so. Regents do not raise tuition to fund one building project.

Stop. I have a brilliant idea and it comes from a silly little guy named Adam Smith who had a crazy idea called capitalism. Privatize the Union completely. I'd rather wipe my ass on McDonald's toilet paper than pay one penny in a fee. Make the Union a for-profit venture and it will pay for itself. The Union services have relatively captive customers and the project is a corporate dream in the making. An aggressive privatization campaign will provide better services, higher quality food at lower costs, and all parties will benefit. I suggest that ASUA and their bureaucratic counterparts spend more time fundraising and less time campaigning for the elections that they "objectively" administer. Envision that.

Chadd Garcia
Agricultural and Resource Economics and Finance senior

Shannyn Smyth
Economics Senior