Last week, we reported on the good fortune of Ellenville's Sebastian Constable, and his acceptance into the United States Air Force Academy, no small feat. This week, we've got an article about Pine Bush's Kyni Scott's football scholarship to Lafayette College of Easton, Pennsylvania, where he'll study business management. These are two stories about young people achieving in and out of the classroom, and the greatness they each hope to strive for in the halls of higher education.

During a time of economic and financial difficulty, schools see higher enrollment, as many who find themselves unemployed take the time to return to school. Furthermore, it becomes doubly important for the workers of tomorrow to arm themselves with the best training and education possible so they can better weather the financial storms they may face.

That's why we're saddened by the news of the $600 tuition hike to State University of New York students — a fee which goes not to the schools, but to state government in Albany as part of their efforts to close the deficit they've been left with as a result of the collapse on Wall Street late last year.

Why should the students of today — and the workers of tomorrow — be forced to open their wallets to pay for mistakes made by their irresponsible elders? This seems to be yet another example of innocent parties paying for the misdeeds of the guilty, a sort of mini-bailout on the state level that echoes the much-publicized federal bailout of the banks which made headlines in the fall of 2008.

In a way, however, this situation is also a preview of what these students have in store for them: they are the inheritors of the damages done by the generations before them. Clearly the money this fee will generate is a temporary solution to an ongoing problem, as the economic crisis will likely last for years to come, and will leave a lasting impression. Tomorrow's leaders will also have to negotiate an environment and ecosystem which seems headed toward collapse, a result of irresponsible and unsustainable ways of life, to which we as a society have grown so accustomed, the very thought of changing seems impossible.

In fact, this fee can actually be seen as something of a lesson in the ways of the world — you-know-what rolls downhill, or so the saying goes. Maybe if the students who have to shoulder the burden of Wall Street's failures learn the right lesson from having their money sucked out of their hands, more injustices of this kind will be eliminated in the future. Class dismissed.

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