Word: fees
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...began with the simple word “believe” and ended with an invented mandate. While the recent referendum on increasing the Student Activities Fee for the Undergraduate Council did, indeed, pass, its low turnout and close outcome present serious concern...
These concerns, I feel, are three-fold. First and foremost, I am concerned by the low turnout and extremely narrow margin of passage that the first question of the referendum yielded. According to the official results, only 35 percent of the student body voted in the referendum, and the fee increase from $35 to $75 was passed by the margin of 53.2 percent to 46.8 percent (1,189 votes for, 1,046 against...
...outweigh the benefits to those who did support it. From conversations that I have had, it is clear that many students are not themselves largely responsible for paying their term bills (due to parents covering the costs and so on). For them there is no downside to increasing the fee, as the increase may yield marginal benefits to them. Therefore, they have every incentive to favor the increase. On the other hand, for students who opposed the increase, the higher cost may represent more of a financial hardship. While I am not suggesting that $40 will force students into poverty...
This brings me to the second major concern regarding the fee increase. While the council’s aim is to increase its budget to allow for greater funding of campus events and student group activities, increasing the fee by such a large amount (more than doubling it) may actually defeat the goal that it hopes to accomplish. As the extremely close results of the referendum show, many students are not in favor of such an increase. While many may happily support the current $35 activities fee, increasing it to $75 will likely cause many...
Lastly, I would like to call attention to the arbitrary nature in which this fee increase proposal was decided upon by the council. Because the goal of the fee increase was to ensure that the council’s budget would be large enough for the events it wished to put on, the process should have begun with an assessment of the council’s need, with the amount of the fee corresponding to the amount of the need. However, the reverse was done: the council first chose a number (originally $100), and then discerned how many events...