Illustration by Josh Hagler

We need to raise tuition desperately.

There is no getting around it, no thinking our way through it, no deferring the problem for another year. There is no alternative. We need a tuition hike now because our school is disintegrating around us.

Lest you think my focus is misdirected, let me assure you that I hate the state Legislature and Governor Hull as much as anyone on this campus. They are dismantling our education system year-by-year, budget-by-budget, from kindergarten through graduate school.

They are using the state's universities as a source of revenue when they should be lavishing funding on schools instead. It is absolutely detestable.

That, though, cannot change right away; it can only change with the election of a government that ranks education among its highest priorities. However, in Arizona, our government has historically neglected education, in an effort to appease taxpayers, who in turn reward legislators by re-electing them. It is an endless spiral that our education system is careening down, and it is picking up speed as it goes.

Even if there were drastic change during the next election cycle, far from likely given Arizona's long-established conservatism, the money would arrive too late, in two years at the very earliest. We can't wait that long.

So go ahead. Lobby. Protest. Vote. Strike. I'll see you on the picket lines.

It is vital that the state know it cannot rob its students of the fundamental right to education without a fight. But refusing a tuition hike on the grounds that the state should be bearing the cost won't do any good.

We will lose not only our right to a good education but also our right to claim that we value it and are willing to make sacrifices for it, which is our only leverage in the fight.

Can we afford to not have this tuition hike? It's true that the university has a responsibility as a public institution to provide an education at the lowest cost possible, so long as adequate standards are being maintained.

But those standards aren't being maintained; they are being systematically lowered. When did it become acceptable for professors to lose their jobs, or for them to be lured away to other state universities so that they can be paid a decent wage? Since when is funding considered adequate while it forces the elimination of entire colleges?

Our funding is not adequate. It is shameful.

We pay next to nothing as it is - in fact, we have the second-lowest tuition in the country. Most of us can afford to pay an extra $300. And those who can't should take solace in the fact that President Likins has pledged to increase grants and tuition wavers to make sure that no one is deprived of an education because of the hike.

He has sworn that no one will have to pay more than they can truly afford, and I for one take him at his word.

It is inevitable that we will suffer in some capacity regardless of what happens, but the loss doesn't need to be debilitating. We have a choice whether we want to pay with our pocketbooks or with our minds. I hope that, as students, we are able to see which is more costly in the long run.

That is why tonight at 5:00, I'll be sitting in Room 211 of the Harvill building, listening to the debate over the tuition raise. Of the students in the audience, I will almost certainly be in the minority by supporting the hike. But I'll be there nonetheless, eagerly listening to both sides.

I hope some of you will join me, and I hope that those who don't will give the issue some thought. Don't let your education go without putting up a fight. Stand up. Act out. Resist in any and every way you can think of. To do otherwise would be worse than hypocritical; it would be indifferent.

You have the right to live and learn and leave here with a diploma that means something significant.

And you can't put a price tag on that.