Members of the WTAMU Student Fee Advisory Committee met on Feb. 17 to discuss the allocation of student fees for the 2012-2013 school year.
“We’re going to try not to raise [fees] because they’ve gone up too much,” Student Body Vice President Nick Goettsche said.
The committee looked over the submitted budgets from student service programs such as Career Services, Kids Kollege, Study Abroad and more.
Dr. Don Albrecht, vice president of Student Affairs, explained some of the decisions concerning the previous year’s budget, including not awarding any money to the Family Weekend program.“We don’t punish organizations for saving money, but if the difference [in surplus money] gets too outrageous, we will lower it,” he said. “It’s not fair to not use reserve money. [The Family Weekend program] had enough money to run it this year if they wanted to.”
Dr. Albrecht also explained how the Recreational Sports, Student Service, Student Health and Student Sports Complex fees work.
The Rec Sports fee can increase seven dollars without a student referendum because there is a 10 percent window where a vote is not needed. The Student Health fee has a similar window. However, the Student Complex and the Student Health fees cannot be raised without a referendum.
“There are no proposals to raise the four fees from the administration,” Dr. Albrecht said.
Although the fee advisory meeting was open to the public, there were no organizations that came in to testify against any of the proposed fees. The list of student fees under review is posted in front of the Student Affairs office in the JBK. The meeting was also announced via The Friday Blast email that circulates WT.
“Rather than just posting [the fees] on the door, make [the meeting] more public,” Brandon Upton, a senior Theatre Performance major, said. “It’s a lack of students knowing about the meeting and where to look that leads to students being misinformed about fees.”
Upton stated that if he knew about the meeting, he would definitely have attended.
“I’ve found a fee or two on my statement that I didn’t know what it was for,” he said. “Do students care to look at the public record or argue for the sake of arguing?”
There will be two more meetings in which the committee will review other fees. The meeting on Feb. 24 at 1 p.m. will review academic areas such as dance, music and theatre. The committee will review new requests on March 1.
“Organizations can have their input on where the fees go,” Goettsche said.
Students who wish to testify in the open meeting must show up 15 minutes prior to the meeting. The committee will only accept testimony on that meeting’s agenda. The closed session will allow for deliberation of the fees. The full agenda will be posted outside of the Student Affairs office.
