As you begin to sign up for summer and fall classes in the coming weeks and in your future semesters at UWM, you might want to avoid registering for any online classes.

They may be unbelievably and incredibly unmatchedly convenient because they save you oodles of time and gas money. Plus, you can do the class work whenever you have the time, but can you afford the $267 fee?

This online class fee business began about a year ago and has been a nuisance ever since. From what I can tell by chatting with people, the fee has in fact deterred people from taking classes offered online.

Was that the point UWM was going for? The world may never know for sure. It would be much cheaper to figure out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop.

I know the school likes to torture and ridicule us with unnecessary fees, but this is a little overboard. The $5 printing fee for the labs, I can handle. Asking students to pay $267 for an online class? Pure blasphemy!

I mean, why make students pay that much extra for something thats as convenient for staff as it is for us poor students? UWM can hire fewer maintenance workers and maybe even fewer teachers by offering more online classes.

So where do these online fees really go? Do we get to pay for the professor to eat his bologna sandwich at home with his poodle in front of the computer instead of teaching in a classroom?

Or perhaps were paying for the select few who live around campus for the summer to go to classes offered on campus while the others off-campus are sucked into paying extra for an online class? Either way, thats money well-spent, kids.

Professors arent even sure where the money goes. Some of it goes back to the department to update and increase supplies and equipment, but theres a huge gap in the percentage that goes to that and how much is made in total.

The problem here isnt necessarily the students paying an extra fee for an added convenience. Its the exact amount of $267, which seems so random. Did they pick a number out of a hat or draw straws? Im lost.

There are those classes youre in right now that could so easily be taken online. You know exactly what Im talking about � the classes you regret going to the second you sit down. You spend the entire class thinking about what you could be doing instead. Why cant that one be online?

Then you realize that if it were online, youd have to pay an extra fee just so you wouldnt have to listen to this professor babble for an hour and a half about things that have nothing to do with the class at all. Is it worth it?

My solution is to make all summer classes online without a fee. Professors, as much as students, dont want to be at school during the summer months, but its still convenient to get some classes out of the way at the same time.

Its an easy solution that would potentially help everyone. It would be no extra charge for an added convenience on both sides. What could be a better compromise?

Then during the fall and spring semesters, tack the fee onto online classes. That seems fair. If its a normal semester-long class, you should be able to make it to school. If you cant, pay the extra fee to take the class online.

It seems like this online class fee deal came out of nowhere with a random price at a random time. What isnt random, however, is my subtle comparison between an old tootsie roll pop commercial and taking a class online for an insignificant fee. Can the candy be included in the fee?

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