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HELP
Students are willing to contribute

Sometimes there isn’t a good reason to help — until the time comes when you need help.

If there’s a fire at your home, the Red Cross is there. If someone you know has cancer, the Cancer Care Center can provide financial and emotional assistance.

These are among 46 local organizations that the United Way supports. To some people, these organizations exist only in phone books. But to those who have used them, they have been a safety net, someone to break their fall.

And the United Way has held up that net by providing money to make these and other programs work.

But there seems to be less money to go around. As we depend on the United Way and the charities it supports, the United Way depends on us.

When the university’s United Way campaign kicked off last week, it set a goal of $110,000, $2,000 more than last year's goal. The campaign was geared to administrators, faculty, staff and retirees.

But it wasn’t geared toward students.

Traditionally students are not targeted because those leading the drive hesitate to ask for money from those currently paying for college.

TCU students have a connotation of not having to worry about money, and a lot of them don’t. And if we do worry about money, we still have something to give.

If every students gave $1, that would be almost $8,000 contributed to the United Way. That’s almost 8,000 ways to help 46 local organizations.

The United Way means a lot to some people. It means a lot to an administrative assistant who lost all her belongings in a fire turned to the Red Cross.

Students either need to be included in the university’s United Way fund-raising campaign or in some program geared specifically to students.

And we, as students, need to avoid get involved.

Thankfully, there are people who have already donated, and if and when our time comes, there will be someone to turn to for help.

So while students weren’t included at the start, they still could be brought in.

Thankfully, it’s not too late. Yet.