Reasons why we shouldn't pay: 1). Why on God's earth do we pay £3000 per year, if we don't get basic rudimental design tools expected in any institution to use. 2). We already pay for printing. (Poor printing if you ask me). 3). The vast majority of our work is handed in digitally. 4). 90% of us use our OWN programs. 5). Universities receive highly discounted Adobe CS programs, so asking each student to pay £40 towards that is crazy. 300+ design students x £40. You're telling me it costs £12,000 to run CS, especially when it lasts for years? Madness. 6). "Your levy will also cover costs to renew the guillotine". Really? You're going to give us that crap? What design centre doesn't have more than one guillotine? 7). No other design faculty in the region pay levies. 8). Are they going to ask next years students to pay the levy? The people who pay 7 grand per year? How are they going to explain that to them? And if they don't charge them, then why charge us? That's discrimination. 9). We supply our OWN paper, sketch books, pens, rubbers, markers, notebooks, laptops. What do the university supply us with? A room and desks. 10). They say it will go towards the final show. A show that no major advertising executive will go to, fact. We're in Sunderland, not London. When will they ever realise this. I'd rather not pay it, and fundraise for New Blood, which we will have to do anyway. 11). New Blood would also benefit any other design discipline, our work would get far more attention there, than in Sunderland. 12). Illustration students have to provide their own paper, paints etc, all of which are expensive in the first place. 13). One of the biggest criticisms we gave to the uni previously was the lack of speakers. And since then, there has been NONE. What does that cost? A bit of digging, messaging, tweeting, brown nosing, email, coffee or brunch. There seems to be no effort put into getting industry personel to come chat with us. 14). it seems like any feedback we give, is rudely ignored. And they wonder why numbers are dropping? Perhaps if they listened to us instead of ordering us, things would pick up.