Monday, August 10, 2009

RANT: Freedom of Choice

I firmly believe in two basic rights - freedom of speech and freedom of choice. Many of us believe we have these basic rights, but what happens when information is witheld from you? Do you really have freedom of choice?

The reason I raise this is due to a controversy that is rearing it's head in the New Zealand town of New Plymouth. Over the weekend, New Zealand held its first Telethon in 15 years. As part of fundraising activities for the Telethon, New Plymouth Boys High School (NPBHS) held a mufti-day for students where they donated money so they could go to school in their own clothes instead of wearing their uniform for the day.

The short version of the story is that despite having over 1300 students at the school, most of which participated in the mufti-day, who each donates $2 to Telethon, only $500 was given to the cause which was raising money for KidsCan. For more details on this, please read Kyle's Blog on the Telethon Ripoff and his Update on the NPBHS Telethon Ripoff.

The school advised that the fundraiser was for Telethon and KidsCan, therefore the students (and their parents who probably gave them the money) participated on the basis that the funds they were giving to the school were going to be donated to Telethon on their behalf. Otherwise, the students and their families could have just donated directly to Telethon or KidsCan.

In the faith of full disclosure here, if the school did not intend to donate all funds, they should have just called it a charity fundraiser. At the very least, be able to provide you a list of the other ‘charities’ they donated funds from the mufti-day to and how much. What are school fees for if not to pay for keeping the school running? Not to mention all the money we pay in taxes each year so the government can give them more money to keep them running... If NPBHS cannot run on the money from fees and from our taxes, then they should really be looking at their operating costs and where they are spending their money, not asking for more money from students and families under the guise of a mufti-day.

I am sure that if the students and families knew that the money not all going to KidsCan and Telethon, but to the school and other undisclosed charities that less people would have participated, but at least then they would have been making an INFORMED choice. At the end of the day, we should not only have freedom of speech, but we should also have freedom of CHOICE. Where information is witheld from us for whatever reason, we do not truly have that freedom.

This is not what I expected my first blog entry to be on, but it really got me thinking about the opinions we have and the choices we think we are making. Our daily choices are based on the information we have been given or acquired from different sources, but how much do we really know? Are we really making informed decisions, or are our decisions actually being made for us by the people who choose what we are told... Just a bit of food for thought.

1 comment:

  1. Looks like the issue is heating up. New Plymouth Daily News has reported on it this morning http://tinyurl.com/l7bkek and Kyle is being interviewed on the radio and TV today.

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