By: Jade Rayner
News Editor

After the extensive process of preliminary decisions and open hearings, the Incidental Fee Committee has reached their final budget decisions for the 2017-2018 school year. The final meeting took place on on Friday, March 3 and was approved by ASWOU Senate on Monday, March 6.

At the start of the process, the IFC committee didn’t have a set plan on what they wanted to increase, with the fee or specific program budgets. However, they did respond positively to groups that focus on student employment.

The total incidental fee that students will owe each term for the upcoming school year will be $349, an $8 increase from the current academic year; the summer 2018 fee reflects a $20 increase compared to the summer 2017 fee, which will bring the total to $153. Regarding the club’s and organization’s individual budgets, only a few faced significant changes from the preliminary decisions to the final one. ASWOU received an $11,793 increase from the preliminary decision, giving them a total budget of $277,132 for the 2017-2018 year. Student Engagement received an increase of $6,570 from their projected budget, putting them at $1,289,707 for the 2017-2018 school year.

Rather than seeing a significant increase, Athletics faced a $5,841 decrease between the preliminary and the final decision. Athletics will have a budget of $1,284,159 for the upcoming academic year.

A big change that came up during the final decision process was the enhancement that was granted to Campus Recreation. The purpose of the enhancement was to upgrade an existing part time position to full time. This enhancement was one that was not included in the preliminary decision; it was also one that received no discussion from students during the open hearing process.

Campus Recreation was given the enhancement, which added $37,126 to the final incidental fee budget: this will reflect in a $3 increase to the fee paid by students each term in 2017-2018.

Contact the author at journalnews@wou.edu