"Illinibucks"

I think that the implementation of “Illinibucks” would take a lot of planning to make sure that all the logistics of the system would run smoothly. Thinking closer about what rules could be in place for this hypothetical situation, I have tons of questions for how it would even work. It seems like a very simple scenario at first, the University just allocates some of these “Illinibucks” to students to use when they deem fit. I would wonder if every student gets the same amount of “Illinibucks,” or if incoming freshman or transfer students would receive different allocations based on things like incoming GPA or what college/major they were in. Using the example of “Illinibucks” being used for class registration, I think it would only be fair to have each student be allocated the same amount of bucks. Since the concept of the “Illinibucks” is to move you ahead in the registration period, it would in a way defeat the purpose to give people who are already earlier in the registration period more “Illinibucks” than those who are farther back in the period who actually would make good use of the “Illinibucks.”

Another issue with this system would be finding a variety of options for students to use these “Illinibucks” with. While I think that using them to “move to the front of the line” for class registration would be an amazing use, if this were the only opportunity of use, each student would opt to move to the front of the line which is impossible, making the system completely worthless. For this reason, I think that the University would have to come up with many things that would be candidates for the use of “Illinibucks.” I was struggling thinking of things that would qualify, since it was explained that the sole purpose of the “Illinibucks” would be to move to the front of the line of said situation.

Ultimately, I was able to come up with a few additional uses other than class registration. One use would be to have the ability to move to the front of the line at the Illini Union Bookstore during syllabus week when every student is trying to buy his or her books. In this case, the line can get outrageously long and discouraging to students, making it a great candidate for using “Illinibucks.”  Another use I thought of would be to skip the line to pick up their cap and gown for graduation, which many students wait in for a substantial amount of time, similar to the bookstore scenario. Lastly, a use I thought of would be to skip a line at a student’s respective career fair. While this might not be applicable to all students since career fairs aren’t applicable to everyone’s major or future plans, I think that many students would like the opportunity to do this. Specifically in terms of the business career fair, students can find themselves waiting in very long lines for companies that many students are interested in, and might only have time to talk to a few companies because they spend so much time in line waiting. I know that if I had this opportunity my junior year, I would’ve used my “Illinibucks” to skip a line at the career fair to give me the chance to talk to more companies, especially one I was really interested in.

Logistically speaking, I think that these “Illinibucks” would be kept track of by the use of the student’s iCard. I think this would be the simplest way if at each designated opportunity to use the “Illinibucks” there could be somewhere for the student to swipe their iCard and the data could be kept electronically for the University have.

Lastly, the price of all these opportunities would have to be set very strategically. Similar to if there weren’t enough situations to use the “Illinibucks,” if the price was set too low, everyone would jump at the chance to skip the line, therefore making the use of the “Illinibucks” meaningless since it wouldn’t be possible for everyone to skip the line. Alternatively, if the price was set too high, students might become hesitant at using their “Illinibucks” too early, which may result in them waiting too long and having some “Illinibucks” left over, being inefficient.