By: Susan Eckstein, University student

One of the best parts about college is supporting our Gophers sport teams. I have had season tickets to Gophers football and hockey for the past three years.

What better way to show school spirit than wearing your favorite Gophers jersey and cheering them on? Unfortunately, politicians in St. Paul are not as supportive of this as we are. The proposed budget in the Legislature includes a 13 percent tax increase on licensed, sports-related products in Minnesota.

This huge tax increase would apply to any team registered with the NCAA. That means that the price of all of our Gophers merchandise would increase.

Doesn’t the Legislature understand that college students are the last demographic they should try and increase revenue from? This tax doesn’t end there, though. It would apply to any Minnesota Vikings, Twins, Timberwolves or Wild gear.

With baseball season in full swing, the last thing we need is a price increase on any Twins merchandise.

Perhaps the worst part about this tax, other than making it more expensive to support our sports teams, is where the revenue will go. The Legislature is proposing spending $300,000 on a boat-landing bathroom, $300,000 on a bee habitat, $100,000 on a tree museum and $840,000 on exotic, overseas trips for artists, to name a few parts of the recent omnibus bills. Oh, and on top of all this, they also want to increase their own annual salary by 35 percent.

This needs to be stopped. College students should not be forced to foot the bill for all of this. Please join me in calling local representatives and telling them to remove this tax from the omnibus tax bill!