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Opinions
O VER T HE TOP ? M E ? Liv Sadler
A
las fellow students, it appears the great Keele Card debate has caused uproar among university ranks. Left, right and centre can be heard fiery discussions focusing on th e arg ument over to pay, or not to pay. Any day now it is expected th at there will be a revolution on campus!
Well perhaps that is a slight exaggeration, but, meh, in the name of satire and, crucially, an entertaining article, I think I`ll keep it in. As many of you have probably seen (and definitely commented to me on) it appears there is at least one critic of my argument about the right to free Keele Cards, and I don`t doubt that there are at least another, oh I don`t know, five or so, more. While I can laugh off the title of being `over the top`, and indeed relish it as a writer, the slur of being ill informed riles me somewhat. I am not ignorant enough to claim that my £9000 (closer to £10,000 actually as the top up fee goes) contributes towards a significant portion of any one of my lecturers salaries, or towards providing all the wonders of our library that in itself is comparable to that lost in Alexandria (don`t get me started), let alone to providing the lab-tastic resources that we get to make the most of...but I am pretty sure the accumulation of the £10,000 that I, and the other 12,344 students that study here, pay to the uni, makes a pretty big dent in that cost. By my calculations £10,000 from 12,345 students means £123,345,000 goes into Keele purely from tuition fees. And that is not taking into account that international students do indeed pay about three times as much (and there are 610 of them), and obviously post grads are paying around that figure also (making up 3400 of the student total) which altogether means the sum is closer to £203,450,000. Now I`m guessing you can do a lot with that kind of money! Just in case that little lot doesn`t cover expenses though, there`s also the accommodation charges. I`m pretty sure my comfy Barnes room and what I use of the kitchen and bathroom facilities doesn`t come to £3000 a year to maintain, even with energy prices as they are. On top of what I pay to live on campus however, the university also makes the most of the accommodation by hiring it out during holiday periods for conferences and that little bit extra income. Then of course there are the IC buildings, almost completely used for independent business that the university makes money from by leasing the offices. And these are the big incomes. Add in turnover from Keele Hall, parking fees, library fines, Keele Card costs, residential fines and so on and you have yourself a tidy little sum to keep things ticking over nicely. And this is what my argument is about. I am not a Keele Basher. I love Keele, I love my uni, and I think of it as home from home. I am not denying that these campus-based businesses have considerable financial parts to play in keeping all the privileges that we have as students as free. But I am saying that if the institution makes that much money then we have the right to expect certain things and question them if we don`t get it. I for one would expect to have a library with more flexible opening
Keele University Students’ Union Newspaper
8th December 2008 hours, so that if you did want to print something off the morning of your 9 o`clock lecture you could and not be late, or if you wished to study that little bit longer during exam period and have the books to hand, it wouldn`t be a problem to stay until midnight. If we have to pay for the right to parking spaces, then make sure there are enough parking spaces before selling the permits, so that there are less parking fines for those who drive onto campus and don`t have any other option. I`m pretty sure the swimming team would like to have a pool to train in on campus as well. The point is, if we have to pay for a brand new Keele Card, then so be it, but if we have an old one, that once was lost, but now is found (bit of an amazing grace edge there) why can`t Keele put a little tiny bit of that huge sum of money into finding out the technological advancement that will make the happy little man behind the counter reactivate it free of charge? After all they`ll do it for free if it gets stolen, or if it stops working and they`ll do it if you`ve got a yellow one when really you should have a purple one (I`ve witnessed this, believe me, it happens). I completely understand that we need to pay in order to receive a service, but, last years 3rd years would have paid just under £3,500 for the whole 3 years of their course, and I`m guessing, got pretty much the same services as we`re getting now. So where is that extra money going, I haven`t noticed any significant difference. Everyone always replies to this with `oh the expansion, the expansion!` Great. The expansion that won`t play a role in my time here. I`m not saying don`t expand because I won`t get anything out of it, that would be ridiculous and if we all worked like that we would never progress anywhere. But what I am saying is, ease the pain of paying all that money that will put us all in ridiculous amounts of debt at a very young age and offer the little things so that it doesn`t feel like we`re paying more but not getting more. And that is why, I will only be happy, when I can go to the Keele Card counter, with an old card, and get it reactivated. For free.
THE
REA DING C AN BE THE S INGLE
MOS T PA INFUL, NON- F ATAL EXPERI E N CE AN Y H U M AN CA N E X PE R I E NC E Francis Statham
t's great being an expert on historical
Ievents. Being able to pluck a name from
the air, and weave bloody and gory stories around them. Dropping intelligent, yet witty comments in casual conversation with mates dahn the pub. It's great. Except, I am not an expert. Neither do I go `dahn
the pub`. I have, however, just completed a 2,000 word essay on certain aspects of crusading in the Middle Ages. It may look like a fairly pithy amount, sure, compared with the heavyweight textbooks I have been ploughing through for the past three decades – essay preparation does relish somewhat in its ability to give a completely distorted concept of time. But it seemed like a fairly pithy subject to begin with. Oh, how wrong I was. How incredibly moronic I was, to think that 2,000 words would give plenty of room for me to divulge in tales of adolescent excursions,
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