Milking the rich kids

State Sen. Ken Jacobsen, D- 46th District, has another reply to a question sparked by the problem no one seems to have a remedy to. Why is the UW so deficient: our over-enrollment and sports scandals and bake sales.

Jacobsen represents a region just north of campus. In a Saturday conversation with Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Jake Ellison ("Senator has plan to improve college access," Oct. 25) Jacobsen laid out his plan, in not-so-exact terms, to stop the "inner-access" problem facing our university.

Inner-access problems, often referred to as "I can't graduate because Freshman Interest Groups are filling my required classes" by seniors, is the now-common hiccup of getting into and graduating from a competitive major at an overcrowded institution.

Jacobsen's big solution: subsidized tuition.

Thanks for the earth-shattering revelation, Ken. A 20-year senatorial career has produced a scraped-together idea that has found continuous criticism from fellow legislators and the ASUW, and was the motivator behind Affordable Tuition Now!'s march on Olympia last spring quarter.

While I criticize Jacobsen's ideas because of their simplicity, keep in mind great ideas are often ruined by excessive complexity.

According to Jacobsen's plan, the price of your education is based upon how much it costs to run the program you're in, and if you can't afford the tuition, you are subsidized with financial aid.

"If you can't afford tuition, we're going to help you, but if you can afford it, we're going to ask you to pay for it," Jacobsen said in his interview.

It sounds simple enough, and recent actions by the University to boost funding, highlighted by a dependency on out-of-state money, have not been any better developed.

Opponents to Jacobsen's ideas -- which have yet to be written into legislation -- are fearful of taking tuition controls away from our state legislators and placing it solely with the Board of Regents or some third-party committee -- as well they should be.

Our republic functions because we have delegated to our representatives the power to make the decisions that affect our lives. Imagine what would happen to the voting rate if all the important decisions went to private committees and representatives only spent tax money to bicker over which pothole to fill next.

But all is not lost on Jacobsen's plans for the UW -- which are strong on compassion and short on logistics. He's addressing issues most representatives have remained silent about while students, teachers and faculty have grown hoarse screaming over a lack of funding, a lack of opportunities and a string of hopes turned to pipe dreams.

However, neither screaming nor silence is going to get us money, create more classrooms or allow the University to regain its former glory.

This may sound crazy, but the state and University need more people like Jacobsen, willing to make suggestions and take the criticism, and less people bitching over spilt cookies.

Besides all the physical problems and daily hubbub, the UW has been hit with a plague -- a sudden epidemic belief that "I am right and everyone else is wrong."

Maybe I am just growing into reality and the awareness that the world has two faces constantly scowling at each other, but what ever happened to the center: the idea we could all coexist, even if we may not all agree? The perfect are the enemy of the good, and right now people are so damn sure they are perfect they won't bend to pick our reputation off the ground.

Inner-access, outer-access, financial aid -- these are problems that face the entire community, not one group, one organization or even one district. They're collaborative issues that require a collaborative resolution.

The problems that may arise over subsidized tuition are secondary to the fact that the idea is on the chopping block -- and by chance may become a single entity in a much-enhanced remedy.