Although it only equates to $1,256 per year in the tens of thousands of dollars an individual student pays to attend school, those fees pooled together make a powerful funding tool for certain parts of the university.
Ohio University’s General Fee, collected from every undergraduate student enrolled in at least one credit hour, funds five separate departments on campus. For the 2013-14 academic year, the fund totaled $25,414,569.
As the university prepares its budget to present to the OU Board of Trustees, the General Fee Committee presented its recommendations to Budget Planning Council on April 18, with an emphasis on funding Walter Fieldhouse staff, Baker University Center repairs and the Career and Leadership Development Center.
The General Fee Committee — comprising primarily elected students and a few OU employees — listens to the funding needs and prioritizes which department gets what.
OU’s former Student Senate President and Chairperson of the committee Anna Morton, said the 12-member committee’s report included almost all General Fee funding requests, which totaled more than $830,500.
The General Fee pool won’t be enough to support all the requests from the Division of Student Affairs, Intercollegiate Athletics and the Marching 110, OU Budget Director and non-voting member of the committee Chad Mitchell said.
“We have a significant amount of other administrative investments that have been put forward that need to be decided,” Mitchell said. “We also have a significant amount of investments in our academic units, and the amount of requests is significantly greater than the resources we have available.”
For the 2013-14 distribution, the committee prioritized Student Affairs because of its recent employee and budget cuts, its efforts to expand and improve Campus Care, and the great number of departments within Student Affairs, including Housing, Campus Involvement Center, Counseling and Psychological Services, and six other departments.
“From my perspective, the benefit of creating a general fee is really being able to say to students these are nonacademic activities, but these are activities that benefit students and student values,” Mitchell said.
Student Affairs again received prioritization from the committee for Fiscal Year 2015 General Fee because of its overarching impact on every student, said Ryan Lombardi, vice president for Student Affairs.
“There are so many touch points within Student Affairs,” Lombardi said. “Our services are truly open to anybody; even if a student doesn’t realize it, they are probably benefiting in some way, shape or form from the services in the Division of Student Affairs. We like to think of ourselves as a truly student-centered function.”
Within Student Affairs, the committee saw its largest priority in funding for the Walter Fieldhouse staffing and building maintenance, recommending $150,000 to the new building.
“(Walter Fieldhouse) was a commitment that not this current body took on, but that senate did, so to uphold and see that commitment’s success, we want to see that come through, and with staffing it provides a lot of opportunities for students,” Morton said.
Student Affairs also requested $253,000 in General Fee funding to increase staff salaries and wages at the same two percent increase the university’s raise pool is seeing, Lombardi said.
However, the committee had a difficult time seeing the logic in the request, Morton said.
“For us to make a recommendation to prioritize that within DOSA’s budget just seemed really unnatural with the way the committee is formed because if you look at the charge and the mission of the committee, it is to recommend and prioritize services that directly affect the student experience,” Morton said. “There was discussion that there should be more student representation before this came to us.”
OU will present its budget recommendations to the Board of Trustees at its April meeting.
For the next year, the committee prioritized the safety of students within Intercollegiate Athletics, including recommendations for athletic facility upkeep because poor facilities could cause more athlete injuries, Morton said.
“This year I’ve seen the administration try to reach out more in certain ways,” Morton said. “I think those are great attempts, but does it effectively engage every student? No.”
Megan Marzec, Student Senate president for the 2014-15 academic year, said she plans to hold open forums on the General Fee and “bring as many students to those as possible.”
Rachel Stearns, senior delegate of the committee, said she thinks her role helps reach some of the student populations on campus.
The committee reached out to Stearns to serve on the committee because she was an athlete not associated with Student Senate.
“I’d like to think that a lot of other students would have the same opinion as me, and that’s why we have other people sitting in is for the regular student population to have a say and figure out an equilibrium with opinions that are brought in by all the people,” Stearns said.
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