Autumn for college kids around Boston brings the stress of midterm exams, the general misery of the common cold, a trip to The North Face and the weighty task of choosing a Halloween costume.
It doesn’t take a statistician to figure out that the 2010 midterm elections don’t take top billing among students, even if Nov. 2 is mere days away. Thus, it’s safe to say that ballot initiatives might be even lower on the priority list. However, students should care about the ballot questions in the upcoming elections and here’s why.
Even though the majority of college students in the Boston area hail from a different state or country, the 2010 ballot questions affect us in a real way. For example, if enough people vote “Yes” on Question 3 on the ballot, the sales tax will be reduced from 6.5 percent to 3 percent. Admittedly, the idea sounds good on paper. We, as college students, spend so much money on tuition, dining plans and housing that we have very little spending money. A break on taxation seems like it could help us save some extra dollars.
This was the trap that the Alliance to Roll Back Taxes hoped voters would fall into when it sponsored the placement of Question 3 on the ballot. The truth is that college students rarely pay sales tax because it excludes items like food, clothing, periodicals, personal services like haircuts and transportation. So, in essence, a student could hop on the T to Newbury Street, buy a shirt from Urban Outfitters, eat an ice cream cone from J.P. Licks and get a haircut from Avanti, while reading a magazine bought from Trident and still not pay any sales tax.
Clearly, it seems unreasonable for college students to vote for a reduction in a tax that we don’t usually pay anyway, especially if this reduction would come with serious drawbacks. The most extreme consequence of a sales tax reduction to 3 percent would be the cut of more than $2.5 billion, or two and a half times as much as the state spends each year on public colleges. This could potentially mean professor layoffs, bigger class sizes, the disappearance of many extracurriculars and a general decline in the quality of education. This would mean that the state public education system might not be worth the cost in the near future.
Additionally, if the sales tax is reduced to 3 percent, local aid to things like public safety, libraries, youth programs, services for seniors and road repairs will be broken off. Because the state would need to make up the deficit, police officers, firefighters and T drivers could lose their jobs. To college students, especially at BU, this would mean that you would have to wait much longer to catch the T to class. If you live in Allston, that could mean waiting at Packard’s Corner for the better part of an hour for a train.
Ultimately, voting “yes” on Question 3 and cutting the sales tax from 6.5 percent to 3 percent would crush any efforts of economic recovery by launching Massachusetts significantly further into debt. Hundreds of middle class workers would lose their jobs, the crime rate would increase because public safety would be jeopardized, the quality of education that Massachusetts has worked so hard to maintain would decrease and the wellbeing of state residents would be in danger because of the loss of funding for community hospitals.
Although the implications of Question 3 might seem unimportant to college students, Massachusetts is an ideal place for higher learning and it’s essential that we do our part to keep it that way. Please vote “No” on Question 3 on the ballot on Election Day.
Emily O’Donnell is a sophomore in the College of Communication.
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