Marcie Ratliff/Winonan

Debt’s a huge problem for college graduates, right? As a group of Winona State University students recently argued in a rally at the capitol, Minnesota needs to shoulder a greater portion of the cost of higher education at state institutions. We’re selling off our futures, and it’s not fair.

Hold the phone. A few assumptions stick out there. My compulsory $6.45 MSUSA fee goes so some students can ride a bus to the capitol and wear signs that tell the whole world how much debt they are willingly subjecting themselves to. All kinds of irony there. Seems to me that if you choose to go into debt, that is not Minnesota’s fault. You could have worked full-time for a couple of years and earned enough for two college educations.

The second point is this: You get what you pay for. Not happy with tuition and fees? Let’s have a Winona State minus the Diversity Center, the Wellness Complex, Counseling and Wellness Services, Career Services, Kryzsko Commons, the PAC… things would be cheaper. I might not be here. I might be married, with two kids and a lot of green bean casseroles and a suffocated feminine mystique.

Finally, we go to a state school. Aunt Henrietta (the state version of Uncle Sam, for the purpose of this article) is already paying for over forty percent of our education. We could have gone to private schools and paid $35,000 a year. But when it came down to the choice, we chose the cheaper—and good quality—education we could receive at Winona State.

I am not arguing for a cessation of student lobbying for funding. Actually, I am. What if instead of spending (wasting?) our time and money talking to people who agree with us and annoying those who don’t, we embraced the complicated nature of the issues at hand?

Which would mean, of course, the realization that Aunt Henrietta doesn’t owe us a college education. The way things are now, in a manner ripe for Marxist criticism, we are responsible for that ourselves.

Nobody’s making us go to school, or making us go into debt at school. We could be making bank at McDonald’s right now, and we might end up there after graduation anyway.

We could go Ray Bradbury-style and spend four years in a library and learn all we need to know. It’s tempting.

Bottom line, we are here, paying to be here, paying to learn here. So here’s a radical idea: instead of whining about the fees, use them. Use the Adobe Suite for free. Spend more time watching movies on your laptop than doing schoolwork. Practice interviews at Career Services. Go to water aerobics. Use the services of tutors and librarians and RAs and SRC desk workers.

Make the most of what you spend at Winona State, whether it’s nights, scholarship dollars, loan dollars, loose-leaf paper, coffeemakers, pillows, vacuums. Perhaps the payoff will be more than monetary.

Contact Marcie at [email protected]