While financial aid money serves the purpose of providing monetary aid for students to use on school needs, it does not mean that it should be strictly limited to use for supplies only.

Although this restriction isn’t going to actually be applied, just imagine what would happen if this money suddenly did become strictly for school purposes only?

Here at Cerritos College, many of you find financial aid to be a life saver because it may have paid for your food when you had no cash, or maybe even paid for an unexpectedly high phone bill.

Rent would no longer be able to come out of your financial aid, neither would food, bills, or anything that isn’t directly related to school.

Not only is this a bad idea, but it would cause campus wide pandemonium if this was to ever occur.

However, it is true that some students put their financial aid to poor use by spending on games, electronic devices, and other miscellaneous and sometimes unnecessary items.

That does not mean that clothing, for example, is unnecessary. How would anyone know if you need clothing or not other than yourself? And if you do, should this rule come into effect, you’re going to need to find a way to pay for your clothes outside of your financial aid.

What about food? Several of the students on campus use their money for food, whether it be fast food on the go or groceries to make their own food at home.

As far as items go, food does not fall under the “school related” category. Does this mean students need to find an alternate financial supply to buy food as well?

A very important need which most students also use their financial aid for is gasoline or bus fare. Basically any for of transportation to get to school.

That isn’t school related either, at least not as far as supplies go.

So now, adding up, if financial aid became strictly for school supplies only students would have to pay for food, clothing, rent, transportation, and bills out of their own pocket.

It just sounds like a recipe for disaster and torn out pockets, plus high blood pressure from all the stress that comes with having so much to pay off and not being able to use the money which was meant to be at your fingertips to begin with.