Some people just don't get it.
Sep. 21st, 2004 01:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ghoulsisOne of the alumni volunteers in my fraternity is complaining (publicly, on a listserv) that a lot of undergrads don't attend the national conventions because of cost. And he thinks it's just silly.
As comparison, he talks about how much money it's costing him to attend a professional conference, and since our convention is so much more reasonable, there's no reason (in his opinion) that anyone should be unable to go. (I find myself wondering how much of his conference cost will be subsidized by his company. But I digress.)
He claims to remember what it was like to be a broke college student. I suspect otherwise.
Best case scenario, if I were an undergraduate going to convention, would be an outlay of around $300. Let's play pretend for a minute. Here's how it breaks down:
The conference itself is about $130 for registration plus the banquets. Hotel is $70 per night. Ok, so far it doesn't sound too awful, especially since you can (theoretically) shoehorn 4 people into that hotel room for the same $70. But five nights in that hotel = $350, split four ways (best case scenario) is still close to $90 per person. (And that's assuming the $70 quote includes hospitality taxes, etc., which we all know drive up the cost considerably.)
Here's the real problem, though: the convention is in Denver. To fly round-trip from here to Denver at that time of year (between Christmas and New Year's) would run between $450 and $500. Ouch. What if I drive? Assuming I can carpool and/or have a reliable car, it's just over 1500 miles of driving each way. If it were physically possible to drive nonstop (four passengers in 8-hour shifts), we could theoretically do that in 24 hours. My car gets about 25 mpg, which translates to approximately 60 gallons of gas each way... times the current gas rate here (which is cheaper than most places at $1.65/gallon) ends up being about a hundred bucks in gas each way. So, $50 per person for gas, but it'll end up being more than that, since gas is more expensive in other states. This is assuming we don't stop to sleep overnight anyplace, which would add an unspecified charge for hotel rooms (since, unlike the convention, most hotels DO charge more for extra people staying in the room). And this is all assuming that my parents would consent to me driving 3/4 of the way across the country with three other college students. (Did I mention this is in the winter? So we're driving across the mountains in the winter. Won't Mom be thrilled?)
So even if I do best-case scenario -- four people in a room, four people carpooling instead of driving alone or flying... I'm still looking at a personal outlay of something like $300. I don't know about you guys, but when I was an undergraduate, I rarely had $300 sitting around collecting dust. That was a LOT of money to me then. (It still is now.)
I'll admit, even though that's not AS huge sum of money to me now... it's still a lot. $300 is still $300, but my perception of it has changed as I've gotten older. I think it's partly because I deal in much larger numbers now -- $500 for car insurance here, $250 for car payment there, $875 for the mortgage... so a one-time outlay of $300 doesn't seem like THAT much to me. But it wasn't so long ago that I can remember sleeping in my car in a Wal-Mart parking lot because the $40 extravagance of staying in a hotel overnight on a long car trip was unthinkable. I simply didn't have it. Very often I turned down opportunities to attend conferences in other cities because I didn't have transportation, or couldn't afford the $30 or $40 registration fee. And forget lodging! The one conference I attended as an undergrad, I was able to attend because there were no housing fees -- I slept on a brother's dorm room floor.
Our alumni volunteers seem to just assume that the students aren't going to convention because they're lazy or have other things to do. Not so -- at least, not for all of them. $300 seems like a lot more when you're making $6.25 an hour at your work-study job, which is helping put you through school. I would have loved to go to the national convention when I was an undergrad... but it was either do that, or pay the rent. And I opted to pay the rent. Back then, $300 would have broken the bank. It's too bad that our alumni can't seem to remember that time in their lives.
As comparison, he talks about how much money it's costing him to attend a professional conference, and since our convention is so much more reasonable, there's no reason (in his opinion) that anyone should be unable to go. (I find myself wondering how much of his conference cost will be subsidized by his company. But I digress.)
He claims to remember what it was like to be a broke college student. I suspect otherwise.
Best case scenario, if I were an undergraduate going to convention, would be an outlay of around $300. Let's play pretend for a minute. Here's how it breaks down:
The conference itself is about $130 for registration plus the banquets. Hotel is $70 per night. Ok, so far it doesn't sound too awful, especially since you can (theoretically) shoehorn 4 people into that hotel room for the same $70. But five nights in that hotel = $350, split four ways (best case scenario) is still close to $90 per person. (And that's assuming the $70 quote includes hospitality taxes, etc., which we all know drive up the cost considerably.)
Here's the real problem, though: the convention is in Denver. To fly round-trip from here to Denver at that time of year (between Christmas and New Year's) would run between $450 and $500. Ouch. What if I drive? Assuming I can carpool and/or have a reliable car, it's just over 1500 miles of driving each way. If it were physically possible to drive nonstop (four passengers in 8-hour shifts), we could theoretically do that in 24 hours. My car gets about 25 mpg, which translates to approximately 60 gallons of gas each way... times the current gas rate here (which is cheaper than most places at $1.65/gallon) ends up being about a hundred bucks in gas each way. So, $50 per person for gas, but it'll end up being more than that, since gas is more expensive in other states. This is assuming we don't stop to sleep overnight anyplace, which would add an unspecified charge for hotel rooms (since, unlike the convention, most hotels DO charge more for extra people staying in the room). And this is all assuming that my parents would consent to me driving 3/4 of the way across the country with three other college students. (Did I mention this is in the winter? So we're driving across the mountains in the winter. Won't Mom be thrilled?)
So even if I do best-case scenario -- four people in a room, four people carpooling instead of driving alone or flying... I'm still looking at a personal outlay of something like $300. I don't know about you guys, but when I was an undergraduate, I rarely had $300 sitting around collecting dust. That was a LOT of money to me then. (It still is now.)
I'll admit, even though that's not AS huge sum of money to me now... it's still a lot. $300 is still $300, but my perception of it has changed as I've gotten older. I think it's partly because I deal in much larger numbers now -- $500 for car insurance here, $250 for car payment there, $875 for the mortgage... so a one-time outlay of $300 doesn't seem like THAT much to me. But it wasn't so long ago that I can remember sleeping in my car in a Wal-Mart parking lot because the $40 extravagance of staying in a hotel overnight on a long car trip was unthinkable. I simply didn't have it. Very often I turned down opportunities to attend conferences in other cities because I didn't have transportation, or couldn't afford the $30 or $40 registration fee. And forget lodging! The one conference I attended as an undergrad, I was able to attend because there were no housing fees -- I slept on a brother's dorm room floor.
Our alumni volunteers seem to just assume that the students aren't going to convention because they're lazy or have other things to do. Not so -- at least, not for all of them. $300 seems like a lot more when you're making $6.25 an hour at your work-study job, which is helping put you through school. I would have loved to go to the national convention when I was an undergrad... but it was either do that, or pay the rent. And I opted to pay the rent. Back then, $300 would have broken the bank. It's too bad that our alumni can't seem to remember that time in their lives.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 11:09 am (UTC)I did a conference in Detroit, and then did one in Columbus. Then I went nuts and went to one in Louisville (about six hours south), but still drove all the way back.
I didn't stay out of town for a conference until grad school, and even then, it was in Chicago and was comparatively cheap.
This guy needs to live in the real world for a while. Or is he only thinking about college students who aren't having to pay for their education?