In college, we had various student organizations that were sanctioned and approved by the college. A rule was that the college would pay for one student of each organization to fly and attend a national convention or conference per year.

In my organization, an underclassmen always goes, so they can learn things and implement that the next school year. It’s also a cool recruitment thing- to say you get a chance to attend a conference for free.

Anyways, my senior year, the Junior who was selected to go was nervous about going alone. So much so, that she offered to take a bus to Texas with me, because the cost savings would be enough to cover both of our travel costs and actually save the college money. This was no small sacrifice, the bus trip was 28 hours each way.

We made a case to the head of the student organizations on campus, but simply said that it could not be done. Only one person could go.

Well, I was a writer for the student newspaper, and out of spite (and because I really wanted to go), I paid my own way and I wrote a story that documented my 28 hour bus ride to Austin to the conference, and why I was doing it out of my own pocket, and how we could have gotten two students to attend instead of just one, and saved the college money.

The dean read my article, wrote me an email and said that it made him “lol”, and that they should “probably take a look at that rule”.

Now they have a set budget allocated for each group. So they can decide how to go about using it.