<p>"Student action has a long track record of tangible results. We are the reason that the library is open on weekend nights. We are the reason that dead days exist. We are the reason that RSF membership only costs $10/ year. We created The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF). *We created the AC Transit bus pass. * We created Spring Welcome Week, ASUC Book Swap, Bears Breaking Boundaries and numerous other ASUC initiatives."</p>
<p>So, it's because of Student Action that UC Berkeley charges me $69.50 each semester, against my will, for a bus pass that I might use 0-3 times. I don't appreciate this at all.
Is there any way for Student Action to take away what they implemented... </p>
<p>If I'm being ignorant, please enlighten me.</p>
<p>They’re the reasons dead days exist? So I should blame them for cutting a week’s worth of school then.
And we also pay for RSF membership amidst our fees as well. And then pay 10 bucks more.</p>
<p>You’re assuming that I am a well-off individual and/or loose with my money – both of which do not pertain to me. $60 is not a trivial amount. I’m careful with where my money goes, and in my eyes I could use those $60 to buy groceries rather than essentially throw it into a black hole and not see any returns. </p>
<p>Petty? Yes, some people grow up under conditions that make them “petty.”</p>
<p>Sorry, but $60 is nothing. It is a trivial amount. For anyone. Tyrion is not assuming you are well-off or bad with money. He’s suggesting that you be even more careful with your money, which is something that you claim to be good at, since you seem to be so concerned about this $69.50. If you can afford Berkeley tuition, you can afford $69.50 per semester. So I don’t really buy the “I am not wealthy, pity me” argument. Very few students here at Berkeley are.</p>
<p>I think the AC Transit pass is incredibly convenient. I make use of it a lot. Not everyone will. But it’s $69.50. Big woop. Look at text books, now THOSE are overpriced.</p>
<p>Anyways, the bus pass is something that attracted me to Berkeley when I was in high school, having such easy and cheap access to public transportation.</p>
<p>I’d like to see you hand $70 over to the next homeless person who asks you for cash. Do you earnestly believe that is a trivial amount of money? </p>
<p>Comparing this to textbook prices? I actually use my textbooks and have the flexibility/choice of finding my own method of obtaining them or even not buying them (which I have done for courses in which I felt the required books were not necessary to own). The analogy isn’t relevant. </p>
<p>If UC Berkeley offered the bus pass to those who voluntarily wanted it, that’s fine –> see other thread. You could argue that this is analogous to taxes, but in this case where our money goes is so apparently useless to me that I can’t help but wish something were done about it. I guess Student Action are the people to talk to.</p>
<p>you care about where your money goes…yadiyadayada…so just use the bus more? Then you are making use of this mandatory fee anyways instead of putting it to waste. You are not the only person here at Cal. Many other people use it every week or every day. In fact, it is very economical because if you use it enough, you are SAVING money. Use the bus to go buy those groceries. Use the bus to go to other nearby cities. Use the bus to go to work. Stop being so close-minded. </p>
<p>So maybe you should take advantage of this and “actually use” the bus like you “actually use your textbooks.”</p>
<p>Icesplendor has a legitimate complaint about being forced to pay $70 for something he/she does not get much benefit out of. The question of how trivial the amount is or telling him to use the bus more isn’t addressing the argument. </p>
<p>In the previous thread you linked, there was some discussion about the class pass being a public good that everyone has to pay for, and also serves to discourage driving. Unless you want to bring the issue to the ASUC though, there’s nothing you can do about it.</p>
<p>I’m handing over $70 to UC Berkeley as a part of my tuition…not a homeless person. Do you really think there’s any comparison there? $70 is not a lot of money when it comes to semester tuition. It’s trivial. And yes, I do believe that. Why else would I have posted that.</p>
<p>@Liquidus</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s a legitimate complaint. All sorts of money we are spending on tuition is being put towards things some students won’t get any benefit out of or make use of during their time at Berkeley. Some students don’t participate in sports or may not have an interest in sports. Everyone has an interest in fast and reliable transportation. $70 for something that every student CAN use? I think that’s completely reasonable.</p>
<p>Look OP, you created this thread and your posts are aggressively defensive. You asked for enlightenment and people are giving it to you.</p>
<p>I too am relatively apathetic about ASUC elections, but I think the AC Transit bus pass was a great idea. It’s extremely convenient for students who live off-campus and it helps make Berkeley even more of an urban campus connected with SF and Oakland, which is one of the University’s big draws (no other UC has the same kind of accessible infrastructure, and neither does Stanford). SF is a free bus ride away, or a free bus ride to a cheap BART ride to the city. Sorry if you don’t like to make the most of your prime location here in the Bay Area. Why not take the bus to the Embarcadero and have a nice dinner with some friends?</p>
<p>…close-minded. Hm. That’s an interesting accusation. I wish you would consider my thoughts on this matter instead of telling me to just deal with the current situation in which I am required to throw away $70 per semester. </p>
<p>I prefer to seek a resolution that would satisfy both those who use the bus often and those who don’t.
Why would I want to go out of my way to use the bus more? I walk to and from campus and work (which is on campus). I enjoy walking to grocery stores. Visiting other cities? I am an engineering student; I need to study consistently throughout the semester for my classes. The opportunity of a study gap to go to other cities does not come often–and even if I wanted to do this, I know that I would never use anywhere close to $70 of bus fare per semester. Just as you say there are many people who use the bus often, there are numerous others in my situation.
Forcing myself to use to bus more would incur additional negative returns upon me. Perhaps I should say–I dislike waiting for the bus, sitting there idle riding the bus rather than walking to my destination. </p>
<p>Those students who use the bus often can still be accommodated for without imposing a mandatory fee to those who have no reasonable use for the bus pass.</p>
<p>I was born and raised in San Francisco. The times I go home, I choose the BART (which I walk to). From my experience, most people (and student organizations) choose BART over an hour+ long bus ride.</p>
<p>As for being enlightened, I am considering what has been posted, but I still do not see a reason for me and others in my situation to be paying this fee.</p>
<p>You can’t walk to San Francisco. I find it hard to believe that you have absolutely no time to go to the city. It takes about twenty minutes.</p>
<p>But regardless, because you are right in that there are students like you who do not need to use the bus, it’s good marketing for the University. Like I mentioned earlier, it allows the University to promote the fact that all students have “free” access to all AC Transit buses. It sounds good, and it is good. And this smart move resulted in an unnoticeable increase in tuition costs.</p>
Exactly. I see no point in arguing the triviality of the fee in comparison to tuition fees since it has no relevance to the topic at hand. Why the bus pass isn’t optional is beyond me. The only reason I could think of is convenience for administration, as that is the prevailing rationale for several mandatory and yet useless (to several) fees.</p>
<p>
It may sound good, but how is it truly good if it isn’t free?</p>
<p>Again, the University prides itself on being an urban campus connected with the Bay Area. Giving students free bus passes helps Berkeley promote this even more. Triviality IS relevant to this conversation because it is why the ASUC decided to give all students AC Transit passes for virtually free in the first place. They thought it was a worthwhile thing to do for a negligible increase in tuition.</p>
Berkeley promoting “free bus passes” as a possible rationale is understandable. However, just because it’s understandable doesn’t mean it’s fair or a reasonable action. It is truly not free to begin with and you cannot logically claim that since the fee is trivial in comparison to tuition, it is “free”, and therefore worth the ability to promote “free bus passes”.</p>
<p>Why doesn’t Berkeley just promote students being given “free slurpies everyday” and charge every student $100 per semester? Surely, this fee is trivial too and will help the University in its promotions. I would think of a better example than slurpies, but slurpies is fine enough as a counterexample.</p>
<p>Note I am not arguing against the fee itself. I am arguing against the fee being mandatory, and if promotion is the rationale as you claim, then it certainly is not a good enough argument.</p>
<p>Because slurpies do not make the daily life of the average Cal student any more convenient or productive. They don’t allow the University to promote any theme in particular. The AC Transit passes allow the University to promote their being a campus connected with the city.</p>
<p>A lot of students use AC Transit. Some students don’t. It’s like a tax. Not everyone drives a car, but we all contribute money toward the building of freeways. There are lots of other areas within our tuition we could target and complain about. I don’t understand why we are complaining about AC Transit, which is an incredibly convenient resource for students who want to make the most out of their location here in Berkeley. Let’s complain about the random fee we have to pay for the landline telephones in residence halls, for example. We could find things like that everywhere. Fact of the matter is, AC Transit passes can be used by anyone, hardly change tuition costs, and reduce the number of drivers on roads and discourage students from using their cars (which is probably one of the main goals of the pass, actually, as it is a partnership with the city of Berkeley).</p>
<p>There are lots of things you are paying for that you won’t make use of. If you’re an English major, you probably won’t be using any labs on campus. You still have to pay. And a measly $70 per semester is, once again, trivial.</p>
<p>You seem to have changed/added arguments.
I’ll go through each one:</p>
<p>You argue it’s a type of tax. This is not true unless if it was made optional, the fee would rise depending on the number of people who choose to pay the fee. Otherwise, it is not a tax. And if it is a tax, this means all students are paying in order to help the regular Transit-users, which is certainly debatable.</p>
<p>You argue it reduces the number of drivers on roads and discourages student-driving. This is certainly true. But why does it discourage student-driving? Because it forces all students to pay a fine for an alternative mode of transportation, and so it would be more useful to use this alternative mode of transportation. However, this certainly is more inconvenient to the student who would’ve rather driven than use the AC Transit. Therefore, this hurts the student in order to help the city of Berkeley, which too is debatable.</p>
<p>And yes, there are many mandatory fees like the AC Transit. And why should any of those be mandatory?</p>
<p>People like Silvern and tyrion really need to take a(n) Analytical Reasoning/Critical Thinking class. I don’t think I have seen so many fallacies and completely unrelated statements to the original post on any other thread here on CC. </p>
<p>How exactly can anyone even argue that the bus pass should be mandatory because the fee is “so small,” that they can just use it more if they feel bad about having to buy it, or my personal favorite that “it discourages driving?” That simply makes no logical sense whatsoever.</p>