On May 22, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act, banning retroactive rate increases and applying more accountablity to both credit card insurers and regulators.

On Monday, the Federal Reserves put the act into effect.

The CARD Act will make it tougher for people under 21 to acquire a credit card, having a direct impact on college students.

“I got a credit card for emerngencies,” said Erica Boston, freshman criminal justice major. “I wouldn’t get a store credit card. I think that it’s a trap. They always offer you discounts to get the card, but it’s a trap because you have very high interest rates.”

Many times in the past those interest rates have risen due to “retroactive increases,” which raise rates on existing balances by the “any time, any reason”, or “universal policy,” policy.

It is this type of faulty business that moved the president to sign a piece of legislation banning this practice.

In the past, college campuses had come to be known as a utopia of sorts for credit card companies, while the young impressionable students would walk away with a goodie bag in hand, and a credit card in pocket.

“I think the onus is on the individual,” said Joshua Bivens, senior supplied change management major. “You should know how to manage your money and if you can’t buy something with cash than you shouldn’t be buying it on credit because you can’t actually pay for it.”

Buying items on credit and not having the money to pay for it, seems to be the trap that millions of Americans had fallen into over the last decade.

Experts have cited that logic, as it applies to the housing crisis, as the  major reason for the current economic recession.

“Us being students, the majority of us don’t have credit,” said SGA Treasurer and senior computer science major, Mason Jones. “We have to build it up by applying for credit, but if you can’t pay it don’t do it.”

“This is great, but students still need to make sure they’re reading the fine print,” said Ann Beamon, Director of Development in the College of Arts and Sciences.

• Malcolm Eustache