CAMPUS CORRESPONDENCE : What’s Trickling Down to Students Is the Bankruptcy of the Present

Their parents and government had bought their future on credit and left them to pay off the loan. Probably realizing that they had better get started, the students at San Jose State University have voted for what their lobbyists in Sacramento had fought against for years--a fee increase.

The vote last month authorized a $15 increase in the previous $5 fee to help pay for what are called instructionally related activities. These are classes that give students some real-world experience--a campus radio station for future broadcasters, dance and theater for potential thespians, the campus newspaper for journalism majors. They are programs likely to come under the Legislature’s budget chain saw.

Admittedly, the money generated will only shave a million-plus dollars off the estimated $12 million in cuts the university must make before the fall semester. Still, it shows that this supposedly apathetic generation is tentatively coming to grips with the fact it will have to pay more to keep what little it has in the way of government services.

Little by little, groups of students on the left and right are beginning to give up ideology and accepting that it is they who must try to pay society’s bills. The free-spending, deregulating, debt-inducing politics of credit that gave them a host of creature comforts as teens in the ‘80s have left them with financially impotent state and federal governments.

The bills are coming due from a decade of political leaders who have lectured today’s college students that paying off debts and keeping honest books were part of the American way. Only it is the students and recent graduates who must pay off this deficit.

Most students can only clinically look at the costs of cleaning up pollution, bailing out S&Ls; or detoxing the crime-ravaged inner cities. But a broke government becomes more real when police protection diminishes, social spending declines and when class offerings shrink. San Jose State must ax more than 200 classes even as it greets an expanding enrollment this fall semester.

And the deficit requires deeper cuts. The students who voted the fee increase knew they had to pay more; it’s an example for a generation.

With the debt as high as it is, and government spending cuts going as deep as they probably will, this generation should get used to the idea it will have to pay off its predecessors’ bills. It is also going to have to shell out more in taxes to put its kids into adequate public schools, drink clean water or even drive on safe roads.

No one, including children of the privileged ‘80s, wants to lose what little disposable cash they may have, but there is little choice. Students and all members of this generation should look at modest tax increases throughout the ‘90s as a necessary evil.

As schools flounder in bankruptcy and the most economically strong state in the country has to talk of cutting social programs to disadvantaged children, this generation must reach deeper into its pockets or begin redefining what America is about.

This generation must realize America is not about the extra VCR, the upscale sports car or a summer home by the beach. It is about safe streets, decent housing and solid education for all. It is also about living within our means and being honest to ourselves.

There will be costs. This generation should not let that reality be swept aside with tales of trickle-down economics, or other debt-ridden tales promising everything, only to deliver homelessness, bankrupt schools and a deficit that makes the country’s future uncertain. This decade is not the time for another tax revolt. It should be a time of grudging tax acknowledgement.

For too long, baby boomers have told the subsequent generation it has no movements, no causes. It would seem that at least San Jose State students have latched onto a goal--getting their university the money to do what it is supposed to do. After graduation, they and their generation must be ready to begin paying the extra to straighten out the rest of the government’s bills as well.