Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Buying the state of Wisconsin

The latest tempest on campus is that all state-funded travel must be paid for using a U.S. Bank Visa card. Apparently, the Doyle administration claims that forcing all state employees who travel to carry a new credit card will provide great efficiencies.

What is probably the real case is that the administration will be getting a kick-back from U.S. bank when state employees use the card. Someone feels that this 1% that the state is recieving is enough to radically change the way travel works for state employees.

There is great resistance to this idea here on campus. Why should we all be forced to apply for (and hand our personal information over to) a new company? Why do we have to be burdened by carrying and preserving an extra card that can ONLY be used for specific aspects of travel up to a limited dollar amount?

We are personally responsible for all debts incurred on the card. I suppose the state will wash its hands of responsibility as well if the card is stolen or is used to steal your identity.

This is just another example of the corporate take over of the public sector in America. We are already forced to carry a U.S. Bank Campus ID card, and now we are being forced to hand over more information to this corporation if we want to use part of our benefits. I wonder how deep U.S. bank has its hand into the student loan business on campus? Maybe we should just outsource the whole operation to a big corporation. After all, education is all about profits, isn't it???

No comments: