On today’s front page, you’ll find a breakdown of the General Fee, a pot of money to which every undergraduate student on OU’s Athens campus contributes $1,256.
After printing a few stories regarding the use (and perhaps misuse) of students’ General Fee dollars this month, we felt this detailed breakdown would be helpful for students.
A few weeks ago, we said that when OU decided to use student money on a multipurpose center, perhaps the student opinion was not properly evaluated.
The point of today’s front page is to at least help provide you with an informed opinion, whether or not your opinion will be used.
Not that you couldn’t have gathered the information on your own, but despite the fact that this information is public, the breakdown on today’s front page is not available in as much detail online.
What is technically available is a pie chart — but good luck tracking it down.
A link to it is now at thepost.ohiou.edu.
Before today, if a student were to go to the Bursar’s website trying to find this information, he or she would be directed to the OU Student Senate website, which used to have a very helpful breakdown of General Fee dollars — however, that breakdown is no longer featured on that site.
Upon being directed to OU’s pie chart, we saw vague, misleading language as opposed to dollar signs and specifics.
This language includes but is not limited to:
• “…in recognition of their relatively lower degree of participation…”
• “…the budget analyst that supports the oversight of General Fee expenditures … (including additional funding) generated by the 1 percent increase in the General Fee…”
• “…meaningful out of classroom experience(s)…”
• “…encouraging the development of the whole student and involving all students in the life of the university…”
None of that really tells you what you’re paying for.
It would be unfair not to mention that university departments did provide detailed budgets — once we asked for them — and several administrators were incredibly helpful in explaining their budgets.
It would also be unfair not to mention a fraction of the General Fee helps keep the lights on here at The Post.
We encourage the university to make this information more readily available, and we encourage you to use the checklist on the front page to find out exactly how much you use the services you are funding.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post’s executive editors.
