It?s that time of year again. Madison is warming up, the 90-plus inches of accumulated snow are beginning to melt as spring break beckons coquettishly, and various student organizations and campus entities are putting the finishing touches on possible referenda for the ASM spring ballot.

Thankfully, this year?s most popular possible referendum promises to be far less expensive than the misguided and costly fall 2006 Student Union Initiative. The Iraqi Student Project would cost students an extra $1 a semester in tuition and is probably the worthiest initiative to grace the ASM spring ballot since I began attending school here.

Initial reactions to the Iraqi Student Project were framed by my misunderstanding ? and apparently, those on the comment boards of The Badger Herald ? of the initiative. As a representative on the Student Services Finance Committee, I was slightly amused to think that the Campus Antiwar Network and those championing the project were suggesting that we use segregated fees to fund a student?s education. As every last one of my readers is sure to be well aware ? what with their amazing dedication to seg fee policy ? segregated fees are not allowed to offset tuition, even that of needy Iraqi students. Yet it would seem the powers that be over at CAN were aware of this stipulation. For the Iraqi Student Project does not call for an increase in segregated fees, but in tuition itself.

At $2 a student per academic year, a fund of roughly $82,000 would be used to fund the air travel, tuition, board and a few expenses of five Iraqi students. In effect, the referendum will form an $82,000 scholarship fund for Iraqi students, paid for by a $2 dollar a year raise in our tuition. It?s a bold referendum, to be sure, and one that I?d say is not only far more affordable than the aforementioned Student Union Initiative, but also far more agreeable and altruistic.

The logistics of such a project are beyond me. The realities of recruiting such Iraqi students, and, as Associate Dean of Students Kevin Helmkamp has commented upon, the visa and admissions process may well prove a challenge to any number of Iraqi students. Providing an in-state tuition waiver will provide even further challenges to such a project. But those and other logistical hurdles should not deter us.

Anyone voting for such a referendum must also assume CAN did its math correctly, that $82,000 is enough to cover costs on our end and that this isn?t some twisted publicity stunt meant only to serve as a political statement on the ASM spring ballot.

Of course, no one really votes in the ASM elections, so why bother making a statement when no one will read it?

While much of the criticism of the project has mistakenly focused upon the legality of using segregated fees, a few of its critics have expressed concern about the precedent we set by targeting a specific group of students while neglecting another. A referendum that targets Iraqi students without addressing the plight of displaced Sudanese students, or even lower-income students from Wisconsin, certainly begs the question: Who do we fund?

Any CAN member will undoubtedly tell you about the terribly dilapidated condition of the Iraqi higher education system. They will tell you, correctly, that university professors are being targeted and murdered, that many university classrooms are now gutted by bombs. But, as the argument goes, there are scores of nations whose higher education systems are just as forsaken. In the face of the plethora of students needing our help, should we be paralyzed by our inability to help them all?

Being unable to help some students should never preclude us from helping others. Further our nation has a greater responsibility to the displaced students of Iraq than we do to those of students in other nations. Were it not for our nation?s injudicious invasion of Iraq, these Iraqi students might still have a university system largely untouched by the senseless sectarian violence that mars the education system in Iraq.

I applaud the idea behind CAN?s efforts. There are far more expensive and frivolous things we could be forced to spend our money on. Two dollars a year is little to ask for a cause so worthy.

Gerald Cox ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in economics.