Our opinion: Budgets

Ezekiel McDermott put a human face on the $1.4 million in budget cuts that have been necessary at Central Lakes College. The 28-year-old summer session student, who was profiled in a story in Sunday's Brainerd Dispatch, doesn't own a computer and has been unable to find time to use the college's computer lab since the reduction of its hours.

McDermott and other summer session students who signed a petition protesting the reduced services argued that they pay the same fees as students who go to class from September to May, but don't receive the same services.

It's hard to argue with that logic, but it's also hard to fault CLC staff and administrators, one of whom offered McDermott a ride to the Brainerd Public Library to finish an assignment on that facility's computers.

Perhaps there's no easy solution to McDermott's immediate problem, but it's important to remember that good people who are trying to improve themselves often pay the consequences for the decisions made by our legislators and governor in St. Paul.