The time has come for radical changes.

President Turner has announced no addition to student scholarships or financial aid. It’s time for the university to invest itself in student interests.

SMU lost a major attribute Thursday when police confiscated methamphetamine-making materials in the Owens Fine Art Center. Perhaps university officials didn’t consider the fiscal benefits the so-called illegal lab components could render.

By producing methamphetamine, SMU could easily close its budget deficit and use net gains for student scholarships and financial aid relief. The operation could capitalize on student input and management.

With business majors overseeing finance and marketing, advertising majors working on underground campaigns and chemistry students producing the drugs, the business would generate serious revenue, as well as offering students job experience. The lab and offices could remain in the OFAC, while student pay could come from product or work-study.

Household products used to make meth, such as lye and acetone, are cheap and available in bulk quantity.

Although electric bills might rise due to high heat needed to cook the chemicals, the end justifies the means. Meth sells for about $80 per gram.

Sure, drug production is illegal, but smoking in restaurants might be too, soon enough. Officials could escape criticism with a strict “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The operations could be independent of the university, releasing administration from culpability of wrong-doing or law-breaking by the separate body. SMU PD and the judicial committee would simply avoid the lab and its workers unless outside forces (University Park officials) forced them to acknowledge the forbidden arts wing.

Meth money contributed toward attracting bright students would propel SMU into the next tier, among the benchmark universities it so wants to call peers.

We are, after all, Southern Meth-odist University.