jeff-perado (stutz[at]unlv.nevada.edu) offers the following satirical look at current policy:
There was a disturbing article I found. [Editor�s note: Dead link replaced with similar story. An earlier story on this episode here.] It was disturbing to me for two reasons. The first was that the girl was described as a lesbian, when her orientation had nothing to do with losing her virginity to a man. The second was that the act was essentially prostitution. Read the opening paragraphs:
LESBIAN university student Rosie Reid, 18, who auctioned her virginity on the Internet to pay for her studies, has had sex with the highest bidder.
Ms Reid slept with a divorced father-of-two, 44, after he paid her $20,500, the News of the World reports.
“It was horrible. . . I felt nervous and scared,” she said. She hatched the plan to avoid graduating from university with debts of $36,700.Could this happen in our country? Has it already?? I cannot say. But as I read this, it hit me that this type of nonsense — it is prostitution after all — could clearly point out one of the major defects of the Republican federal policy doctrine. Since tax cuts for the rich are all the rage, and thus money for scholarships is drying up faster than the Colorado River, somewhere something has to give. Either Bush and his Congressional cronies will have to come out and tell the American public that they don’t want middle and working class college-aged students to go to college, or rethink their tax and spend policies. Since Bush is the type of man who tells the world “If I said I was going to drive my car off the cliff, then I don’t care what anyone says, I will be going over that cliff in my car — and with the accelerator pressed to the floor at that.” We have seen the effects of Bush’s suicidal tax policy; the states, who too face budget problems, have been trimming back on scholarship and grant money, and drastically raising tuition as well. Some states’ Universities, I know of Penn State and University of Tennessee Knoxville in particular, have seen double digit tuition increases over consecutive years. (UNLV has been largely immune — thank god for gambling and booze.)
Since Republicans are making it difficult for working class students to go to college, they have created a huge problem for their policymaking selves. In order for students to go to college, they must get creative to pay the bills. So what is the Republican to do? Why combine other policy elements into a new program, of course! It seems as though the reason they actually pushed “abstinence” programs in high schools around the country now has a clear purpose; that was to increase the girl’s economic value when she sells her body for sex, to pay the bills. There’s smart economics and good clean free-market capitalism at work. Bush, after all, prefers the private sector to underwrite most social costs, and he also is in favor free-market driven economics of just about anything, including the education of our children. It is just too bad this newest technique for paying for college will drive the religious right up the wall.
But then again, I doubt Bush would support this new policy as it is one of “small business entrepreneurship,” and we all know Bush favors growing only the largest corporations at the expense of entrepreneurs. He has shown his contempt of them by making it easy for large companies to outsource jobs to countries where labor is cheap, leaving entrepreneurs stuck with having to hire local and more pricey, American workers, and thus are less competitive with the big corporations – who provide the same product for less cost. This, to Bush, is the meaning of free trade. So Bush will soon after touting it, begin to fight this new concept of girls using their bodies as assets, and their entrepreneurial spirit in favor of having Halliburton control all prostitution in the country. Halliburton will, of course, save labor costs and increase their profit by importing cheaper prostitutes from Thailand, thus putting all those American college girls out of business because Halliburton can pay the Thai girls less for their services — therefore actually unfixing the tuition cost problem it was intended to fix. Yet, Bush will then claim that he has solved the college tuition problem, and it was done because of cooperation between government and Halliburton. Then in an ironic twist, he will also claim the moral high ground as well, since he will be able to say that he put a stop to “good American Girls” selling their bodies for money, and allowing foreign “professionals” to do that job, which is, according to Bush, beneath Americans. So he can tell America that he has “put a stop” to American prostitution (by importing non-American prostitutes).
I don�t suspect we�ll see many brothels set up on campuses anytime soon. But two related items are worth mentioning. First, in the 2005 budget the administration has proposed a freeze for supplemental grants and work-study aid available to students, and a cut in Perkins loans. This, combined with continued tuition hikes, will only make it more difficult for low- and medium-income families to afford college. Second, there already is organized prostitution in the United States (commercial sex trafficking), but I don�t think many of those females are on their way to college campuses in the near future.