Bailey Thompson | News Editor
After months of deliberation, Western’s Incidental Fee Committee finalized their decision for the 2019-2020 school year IFC fee on March 6, nearly three weeks after their Feb. 15 preliminary decision. In the weeks between these two budget decisions, the committee held open hearings on Feb. 21 and 22 for members of the Western community to express their opinions about the budget, and they also tabled in the Werner University Center to get student feedback.
With this information in hand, Rachel Bayly, junior interdisciplinary studies major and IFC Chair, discusses what her experience was like in leading the committee to a final decision.
“This year was a tough year. With inflation and with enrollment dropping next year, there was going to have to be a huge increase in the fee just to keep everything funded where it’s at,” said Bayly. “We had to make cuts — that was known going in. So, going into the preliminary decision, we went for our worst-case scenario; this is the most cuts we want to make, and hopefully for our final decision we can add some back in based on what we hear from students.”
Reflecting on the open hearing process, Bayly shared how much she appreciated students being so respectful and understanding about the difficult decisions that had to be made.
“Some people were even saying, ‘thank you for only cutting us three percent.’ There was that much understanding, which I thought was so great,” said Bayly. “Another thing that struck me was people saying ‘I’m not involved in that, or I’m not involved in these departments, but I see the benefits that they bring. And I know people who are involved.’ And that interdepartmental support between students was so great.”
When it came time to make their final decision, the committee utilized this student feedback to add back funding to a number of the departments’ budgets.
Bayly then conveyed the significant changes that IFC made between the preliminary and final decisions.
“The biggest change was that we put quite a bit of money back into campus recreation. With the cuts that we had applied, they were looking at having to cut quite a few hours of the wellness center,” said Bayly. “They got the most money added back into their budget, but almost every budget got money added back in. And we were even able to add back in a couple of enhancements — extra things for people to get to do next year.”
With these changes, the fee is now set to increase 16 dollars from the 2018-19 to 2019-2020 school years, from 363 to 379 dollars per term. This is four dollars more than the preliminary budget was originally set at.
If students would like to learn more about the IFC process or final decision, Bayly recommended reaching out to anyone on the committee for more information. Bayly can be reached at rbayly16@wou.edu.
Contact the author at howlnews@wou.edu
