The Student Activity Fee is part of the tuition bill each student pays every semester. The money from the fee goes to certain campus organizations, such as Athletics or The Horizon.
The fee is based on credit hours. Students pay $5 per hour up to 12 hours. That means someone taking 15 hours would pay the same fee as someone taking 12.
A full-time student pays $60 for the fee.
Since the spring semester is nearly finished, take a look at how our money has been spent since August.
Athletics alone received $133,437. In the fall, they bought two treadmills, an indoor batting cage and a section of bleachers.
Individual sports aren’t included in that total. Add up every sport along with Athletics and you’ll get a whopping $332,568 out of the $643,095 pool.
That’s 51.72 percent of the fee distribution.
To be fair, it is expensive to manage a team and keep up with equipment. It also costs money to rent buses for away games and to stay at a hotel if needed.
On the other hand, more than half of the fee is going toward less than half of the student body. A lot of people play, watch and enjoy sports here, but not that many.
None of the Athletics money went toward paying for “Gus,” the new IUS mascot revealed in November. Good ol’ Gus cost $8,200.
Ruth Garvey-Nix, vice chancellor of Student Affairs, said the funds for the mascot were not part of the annual budget, but from the year-end budget expenses.
Basically, it was paid for with Activity Fee leftovers.
The cheerleaders didn’t even get enough money from the fee to pay for their own uniforms. They lost $500 from the amount the fee paid them the year before, leaving them with $1,000 for this past year.
The team had to raise $8,000 themselves. Pat Mrozowski, athletic director, and Joe Glover, assistant athletic director, helped secure and additional $845 to help the squad pay for uniforms and pompons.
It seems out of whack. The teams shouldn’t have to worry if they’ll have uniforms. They should be focused on their performances.
Other groups on campus weren’t happy with their share of the fee, either.
The Student Government Association lost nearly $2,000 from the year before, leaving them with $10,950. Garvey-Nix said the committee decided to slash the SGA’s share of the fee to focus them on their mission.
I’m not convinced they’ve spent the money well so far. Free pizza, anyone?
The Student Programming Council lost nearly $1,187 from the previous year, leaving them at $60,921.
Volunteer Programs lost nearly $1,000. They had $22,046 to spend this year.
There are groups who received a big chunk of money. The Children’s Center got $128,006 this past year, which was a $24,432 increase from the year before.
Garvey-Nix said they received extra money to raise salaries for their employees to market value.
However, now the Children’s Center receives 19.9 percent of the fee. It is an important part of campus, but I doubt one out of every five students will use the center.
If nothing else, remember all sports, including general athletics, gets 51.72 percent of the fee and the Children’s Center gets 19.90 percent.
These are both very expensive operations to run, but I just don’t see the direct appeal to such a large part of the student body.
Instead of paying for a mascot, the money from the fee should’ve gone toward something more useful for everyone.
How about making every door on campus wheelchair-accessible? Most of them are, but a few, like the door on the back side of Life Sciences and the door in The Commons should be upgraded.
The university could invest in SMART Boards, interactive boards allowing a professor to interact with a PowerPoint presentation just by touching the screen.
Or perhaps a few investments could be made in equipment. With better equipment, the broadcast program on campus may attract more students. The university has tremendous growth potential for people interested in broadcast. We could rake in a lot of money from additional students.
Yes, there is a broadcast program on campus.
I’m not saying money from the fee is severely mismanaged. However, as a full-time student who pays $60 each semester, I do have a right to say there are better ways to distribute it.
The 2009-2010 Student Activity Fee will hopefully show some improvements.
The money is distributed by the Student Life Committee. The full breakdown is available at http://www.ius.edu/StudentAffairs/activity
fee.cfm.
Joseph Dever
Editor
jwdever@ius.edu