Theft at the Dinkytown Target is at an all-time high, only the victim here is not who their public relations team would have you believe. Students are being robbed down every aisle. The syndicate operates widely across the Twin Cities, artificially inflating the cost of goods in vulnerable communities to maximize revenue.

Avoiding their shakedown is nearly impossible. The few grocers within close proximity to the University are, for lack of a better term, ungodly expensive — but not because they have to be.

“Dynamic pricing” is a staple in the arsenal of corporate greed. This refers to retailers adjusting prices based on a store’s location, the time of day, an item’s projected profit over time or, based on my research, literally anything else.

What we have here is a classic example of economists translating predatory capitalism into jargon that is meant to excuse the immorality of their behavior. It isn’t price gouging, see. It’s dynamic! What’s not to love about that?

“If you live close by, there’s really no other option,” said Ciara Allen, a psychology major at the University of Minnesota. “I’ve noticed that the price of Advil and other stuff you would need is inflated, even compared to other Targets.”

She’s right. An identical bottle of Advil at the Dinkytown Target is a full $1.50 more than it is at the Target in the Quarry Shopping Center just two miles down the road. The only difference is that a student would need to take some kind of transportation to access the latter.

I’ve stopped in at the Dinkytown Target countless times to grab some items while trudging home after a long day of studying, too exhausted to wonder why my total was so high. But that’s probably what they hope for.

I reached out to Target for comment on the matter and, after an initial phone conversation with a company spokesperson, they provided this statement via email:

“Target’s goal is to be competitively priced in each market. Competitive pricing is based on the retail environment for each individual community, and in trade areas with more than one Target store, it is possible that Target’s prices on selected items may vary from one Target store to the next,” the statement said.

They assert that a Target in a food desert “may” be more expensive. I don’t buy it.

Unless the competition is “how much money can we squeeze out of this cornered market,” there’s nothing competitive about this pricing. A lack of competition is exactly why they can operate in this way. Kare11 investigated discrepancies in Target’s pricing in 2019, and even though they’ve supposedly moved away from that strategy, its basic function has stayed the same.

This scheme can only be described as hostile. While Target is certainly not the only offender, options near the University are practically nonexistent.

In the last few months, we’ve seen the consequences of unregulated capitalism take hold of our campus community. Every major expense that a student could possibly incur — groceries, rent or tuition — has been pushed to extremes that have not been seen before in human history. Something’s gotta give.

Being a student in this world is undignified. Cruel, even. You’re a cash cow for freakshow corporate vampires while simultaneously being as broke as you might ever be.

There’s nothing more insulting than being nickel-and-dimed from all sides, and we should not get used to it.