shed some light on. "Don’t tax my loan" - this is one of my favourites. It goes on to say that a 3% tax on _ student loans will hurt those who can least afford the cost of university, those on student loans. I am curious about who those people are. I realize that some people have circumstances that necessitate the need for a student loan, but they are only a small group. I feel nothing for those students who need a student loan because mommy and daddy won’t pay for university. It seems that so many times the whinnying about this 3% tax is coming from those students who are in need of financial assistance when it comes to paying tuition but are financially secure enough to go to Myrons and drink every weekend or to buy new clothes every month. This 3% one time tax seems to be far better than paying 15% interest every year On a normal bank loan, or did we forget that the government doesn’t charge us interest? How come these students can’t pay for their university out of the money they earn at work? Is it because there are no jobs out there? Right, anyone who Says this is just too lazy to work. So they might have to take a job at a burger joint for $5 per hour, it adds up after a while. Or are they too good for a job like that? Then these same

people complain again about how the government »

is cutting back on student summer employment programs and this results in their not getting a job in the summer. So, of course, they may as well spend their summer at the beach. How much do we have to baby these students before they run out of flimsy excuses. Do they expect someone to find them a job after they graduate? Anyway, we can get involved and help stop the tax! We can sign one of the CFS anti-tax postcards and send it to Ottawa. Just address it to "Who Care, Ottawa."

One of the most humorous lines in the "Student Voice" came on the first page where the CFS took credit for getting university tuition and residence fees exempt from the Goods and Services Tax. | don’t remember the government ever saying that it was going to tax fees and tuitions and I| guess I must have missed that big yellow poster campaign. Oh well, it doesn’t hurt to Iet them think what they want to think. I admit that the GST on books is a bit of a pain but I don’t think that an extra 7% will kill anybody. It will only be $3.50 extra on a $50.00

book, which is not so bad.

Now I do not want everybody thinking that I am necessarily opposed to the CFS organization. It is a great organization for students; Its SWAP program, its student saver program, and the many other programs that it offers provides excellent opportunity to many students. I just feel that if they stopped whining so much and started to concentrate on the more important tasks and programs at hand then the organization would greatly improve and be far better able to represent the university students of Canada as smart-minded, clear thinking individuals, not as the immature, weak minded complainers we appear to be.

It is sad to think that in many of the countries of the world it is excessively difficult, if not impossible, for youth to attend university or even to have any formal education at all. In many of the countries where there is a post secondary education system available, the admission requirements are so high that only a fraction of the top students are admitted. Students must spend numerous hours studying each and every day in order to achieve a 97%, 98%, 99% or even 100% average just to qualify for entrance to a university. Then there is the exuberant tuition fee charged on top of that.

We are lucky enough to live in a country where education is open to people of every race, age and sex. Where scholarships, bursaries and loans are available to assist those in need and where government willingly pays for over than three quarters of our university cost. Did we forget all this?

University is a privilege, not a right and we should treat it that way. We are lucky.

Thankfully, A student.

The UPEI X-Press

November 1st, 1990

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