By Jack Armstrong News Editor
Below is the breakdown of student fees per term for the 2015-2016 school year. Students will pay $327 per term, which will be allocated to the following funded areas. The values listed below are based on the average of the projected enrollment for the 2015-2016 school year and the final decision from the IFC. Values were rounded up.
Affordability for our students is paramount, and fundraising relieves the student body from increased cost to attend.”
Western’s incidental fee committee has had their proposed budget for the 2016 academic year officially approved by President Mark Weiss. This version of the budget is now set to take effect fall term of 2015-2016.
The IFC is a group of student leaders supervised by staff advisers. The only voting members of the process are the students who sit on the committee.
Incidental fees are collected separate from students’ tuition every term and are used for student clubs and activities that fall outside the realm of academics.
IFC voted through their final version of the budget Monday, Feb. 16. The proposal was then ratified by the Associated Students of Western Oregon University senate Wednesday, Feb. 18.
Once the budget was agreed upon by both student organizations, the decision was moved to President Weiss for final approval.
“I respect the diligence of the IFC members and the role of student senate in reaching a conclusion,” Weiss said. He approved the budget on first viewing within the five days allotted to him though the by-laws.
Now that the budget has been finalized by the administration, the per-term fee for 2015-2016 will increase $5 from 2014-2015 to $327, or $981 per year total.
This year’s decision was met with resistance from students and staff alike in departments who were chosen to take cuts. The athletics department received the heaviest cut, taking a 5 percent overall reduction in their budget.
Many student-athletes reacted angrily to this cut in the series of open hearings held by the IFC Thursday, Feb. 5, and Monday, Feb. 9. In fact, the majority of the students at the meeting were athletes looking to affect change in the committee’s course.
When Weiss was asked whether this turn-out had made his decision more difficult, he said, “I was made aware of certain changes to past funding levels, but I deferred to the democratic process in place.”
In addition to looking at a reduced budget, the athletics department also had some requested enhancements turned down.
Enhancements differ from the overall budgets because they are a one-term increase in funding for an organization to be put towards a specifically requested item.
The athletics department had been initially approved to receive a replacement on-field headset for the football program with a one-time enhancement priced at $43,712.
IFC decided to remove this enhancement in the final version of the budget in an attempt to keep the overall fee increase as low as possible.
During IFC’s presentation to the ASWOU senate Wednesday, Feb. 18, IFC member Jessica Hand said, “We have a responsibility to the entire student body to keep costs as affordable as possible, and any enhancements we approve should benefit as many students as possible.”
President Weiss said, “My experience has been that the approved budget is representative of views for those students that participate in the process, but the result may not necessarily represent the views of the student body as a whole.”
Similarly, IFC also decided against granting the enhancement that gives students free tickets to most of the school-run theater productions at Western.
“There wasn’t enough data provided by the department about student attendance to provide approval,” Hand said.
Now that the budget for next year is set, some clubs are already turning to fund raisers and other alternative forms of filling in the financial gaps.
Weiss believes that this approach is a good compromise and said, “I encourage all clubs to fundraise as much of the cost of their programs as possible.
