In what seems to be a direct attack on Athens' yearly Halloween celebration, Ohio University recently instated a $25 fee for Halloween guests staying in the dorms over the weekend.
The claim is that the money is needed for campus and residence hall security and communication costs. And granted, OU does spend a lot of money ' $91,443 last year ' and recoup little. But not only is it ridiculous to make students pay even more money for their dorm rooms ' on top of the outrageous room rate increase that followed the decision to freeze tuition ' it is also taking advantage of them. OU mandates that first- and second-year students live on campus. Freshmen and sophomores who are stuck in the dorms already pay for their room. For a $25 fee, what do they get? The privilege of letting their friends sleep on the floors they already pay an average of $4,365 a year to use?
The fee would make more sense if guests actually got something out of it, say, a meal at the dining hall or a T-shirt. But instead it's an arbitrary fee, another case of administrators ignoring student views. It's also another case of Student Senate acting as the administration's pet puppy instead of the student voice. Senators might have grumbled a little about the lack of student input in the fee decision, but they still voted to approve it. Moreover, it probably decreases student safety, because students will now try to wheedle their off-campus friends into letting visitors crash at their places on Mill or Palmer streets.
University officials would be wise to embrace Halloween, accept that it's not going to disappear and then work to make money off of the thousands of people who come to the Mardi Gras of the Midwest, perhaps by hosting a concert, or selling Halloween products or weekend parking passes, or creating a tour of the Ridges. Instead, they continue to target students who want to enjoy the party and shy away from using Halloween to its full potential.
The university has said based on last years' numbers, it could earn $60,000 off this plan. But it seems more likely that the nefarious hope is that the money will deter visitors, and eventually everyone can spend Halloween weekend sitting in their overpriced dorm rooms studying to increase OU's national prominence instead of partying on Court Street.
Fortunately, the odds of that scenario happening are about equal to the odds that Saturday's festivities will be non-alcoholic.
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