Kroger is now the official grocery store of SMU Athletics. Recently the grocery store chain sent out a direct mail piece that contained a Kroger Savings card all dolled out in Harvard Crimson and Yale Blue. The card encourages students and staff to “Stampede to Savings” at your local store and 2 percent of your purchase will go to SMU. The hope is that students will prefer the school’s card and even hang it from their keychain. The card exploits what little school spirit that the SMU faithful is fighting to keep alive.

While someone has to be commended for getting Kroger to make this deal, SMU students and staff in general should probably stampede elsewhere. Students already give the university $30,000 a year, now the university is creeping into our shopping carts to take some cash. It’s nice to have a new way for the university to collect money, but the card would be better served if the mailing list excluded SMU students and staff and included the community at large.

With tuition and fees set to make another increase, you can tack on another 2 percent. The good news is that it comes directly from your existing grocery bill instead of your pocket.

Ed Board has a better idea. Everyone has been in line at a store and noticed a little clear box with a hole in the top. Right above it is a picture of a dusty little child or lonely teenager asking for the change you get from buying ramen noodles and Easy Mac. The board proposes the idea of one of those boxes with the president’s mugshot asking for that 47 cents. We get something like that in the mail about every April, anyway, so it wouldn’t hurt to see it at the store instead.

There’s a bigger issue, though. Since Kroger sells alcohol, students can buy it and actually donate part of that alcohol purchase to SMU. If you can make the stretch to say that SUVs support terrorism, then the idea of beer supporting SMU isn’t that impossible.

Again, this is a good attempt to increase revenue. But with so many involuntary costs associated with being a student at this university, the concept of tacking donations onto our groceries can make one a little uneasy. But seeing Turner on one of those clear boxes could make the Easy Mac taste a lot better.