The following blog post is by Family Council staff member Ken Yang.
Ok, so it has been awhile since I’ve written a post about the Arkansas Lottery and Bishop Woosley’s blatant disregard for our students, but when they consistently mislead the public I believe someone should always speak up. This past month the lottery has changed its rules and odds of the lottery game Mega Millions, and just this past week I heard a radio ad telling the public how much better a chance you have of winning now. Well, that’s a bit misleading, too.
The new rules, effective October 19th, include a higher starting jackpot, however instead of choosing your first five numbers from a pool of 56 you now choose them from a pool of 75. But they try to counteract that by saying you get to choose from a pool of 15 for the Mega Ball number (in Mega Millions you choose 5 initial numbers and then a special Mega Ball number). The chances of winning just became much worse. Great that you can now pick ONE number with better odds, but the other FIVE numbers are harder to pick. I guess the lottery is preying on the people in Arkansas that can’t do math?
Now if you ask Bishop Woosley, he’ll tell you its easier to win a prize now — an increase in odds from 1 in 40 to 1 in 14.7. But he won’t tell you that is basically just break-even money to keep you coming back, AND he won’t tell you it’s a lot harder now to win the jackpot. Your odds of winning the jackpot went from 1 in 175.7 million to 1 in 258.9 million.
Bishop Woosley will then say its about generating more sales for the lottery and giving out more money for the players. But Bishop Woosley testified Mega Millions was changing their rules because people were winning too much, but now he advertises to the people that he wants them to win more. Once again, there is no mention of students and scholarships.
Our lottery officials should be ashamed. What about the students? What about the scholarship money? Shouldn’t that be our number-one priority? Bishop Woosley seems more concerned with giving himself a raise, the players of the Arkansas Lottery a raise, but not giving the students of Arkansas who wish to continue their education a raise.
Leon