The most important issue facing students right now is that of differential tuition, which will fund the proposed student compact. This is an issue that will affect all students, yet many students know little or nothing about the plan, even though the Advance-Titan has covered this issue extensively.

The only explainable reason as to why students are still so ignorant of these important issues is they do not understand the complicated language of typical news articles, which are usually written at an eighth-grade reading level.

All that information is boring and hard to understand. A typical student just ignores any articles that do not include information about beer, fiery car-chase explosions or the "Van Wilder" DVD.

To remedy the problem of rampant ignorance of the issues deemed most important by people who work on a newspaper, I will now break down the key factors of the student compact and differential tuition in a way that any sloth-witted student could understand.

The following column will now present the ideas of differential tuition and the student compact in the technical terms, and than a more understandable explanation in parentheses.

There are heated debates going on throughout the campus as to whether it is worth the money students will have to fork over to have the benefits that will follow, including supposedly increased advising.

(Hey, what?s that over there? You see that thing? Look at that thing, it?s shiny. Watch, it?s glinting in the sun. Wow. Look at the pretty, shiny thing.)

A debate has arisen because many students have questioned whether or not it is worth it to increase tuition, even by a small percent, to improve something such as advising, which many students deem worthless to begin with.

(Speaking of pretty, you sure do look pretty today. What shampoo do you use? It sure is nice. Your hair smells like coconut and passion berry. I like it, it smells good.)

The student compact is a plan presented by Chancellor Wells that will improve several student services on campus, most notably academic advising, student mentoring and integrated academic support resources.

(Hey, have you ever been to the advisers? They aren?t that good. They don?t care about the students. Wouldn?t it be worth it to have more tuition for your parents to pay to have advisers who actually care about you? Don?t you just hate your parents? Wouldn?t it be great to make them pay more so you can have advisors not to go to?)

One of the chancellor?s key issues with the compact has been the need to have students partially fund the compact through differential tuition. Differential tuition is usually defined as a student fee, which supports academic services on campus.

(They could tell you what classes to take, and sign you up for them. For a small fee, you could have an extra shoulder to cry on.)

Under the compact, the students will pay for 20 percent of the total cost of the plan over two years, paying $25 the first semester and a minimum of $55 each following semester.

(Wouldn?t it be worth it? Because you deserve it. You?re special. You deserve something better ... what?s that? No, I haven?t seen your wallet. Are you sure you lost it? Maybe you just left it at home? I sure didn?t take it. Hey where are you going?)

And that is really all you need to know about differential tuition and the student compact.