Shameless Commerical Plugs

Okay, so I will reserve a little judgment on this, since all I know is what the Boston Globe reported. But this story about how McDonald's "tricked" a class of Boston University students into being in a coffee commercial just gets my blood boiling. Here's the money shot, almost literally:

After the commercial was taped, students featured in the ad signed a release so that their images could be used. For their participation, the students were each given a $10 gift card for Apple iTunes. Typically, a union actor featured as a principal in such an ad could earn $592 a day while an extra can get $323, according to Boston Casting Inc.

I went to BU, graduated class of 1998. At the time, tuition, room and board were $30,000 a year, on average. If I'm paying THAT MUCH to go lectures, I sure as wouldn't sell out for a lousy $10 iTunes gift card. My god these kids are dumb. At the very least they should've demanded scale.

Personally I like to think that had I been sitting in that lecture hall, I would've outraged that my likeness would be co-opted by an entity like McDonald's, and even more outraged that my time (for which I was paying BU approximately $25/hr for the experience) was wasted in such a way.

And mind you, BU costs over $50,000 today, so those kids are paying over $40/hr to be in class.

Here's my math: Approximately 7 months of the year is spent in session. Times 22 "business" days per month, times approximately 8 hours per day spent in class or otherwise on schoolwork. That equals1232. Divide that into the annual tuition, room and board costs.