By
The Wildcat Online Opinions Board
Recently, UA Cat Tran employees have stated that their wages are too low, and wish their budgets allowed for pay raises.
Some have suggested that mandatory student fees, such as those that are implemented at other universities, ought to be charged to UA students' bursars accounts to help increase Cat Tran's budgets.
While Cat Tran employees may have a legitimate complaint that their pay is too low, creating mandatory student fees is not the solution.
As part of UA's tuition system, every student is required to pay a mandatory KAMP, Arizona Student Association (ASA) and recreation center fee.
These fees, $27 in total, are intended to help fund university events - and provide students with a membership to the gym.
However helpful these fees might be to campus associations, not all students take advantage of the services they support. Maybe they should, but the fact remains that they don't.
Hence, students should not be overwhelmed with charges for services they do not use.
The UA has provided the free shuttle service to students since 1987, the budget for the service being drawn solely from parking permit sales, meter revenues and parking garage fees. Becky Navarrette, a Cat Tran relief driver, pointed out that other universities support their campus transportation with student fees.
Interesting proposal, but where do we draw the line? Look at the McKale basketball ticket issue. What if McKale started forcing students to pay a mandatory fee to the athletic department every semester to ensure that students get tickets to the games? It worked for the University of Oregon - the school requires its students to pay $88 a year in exchange for reserved tickets to sporting events like basketball and football.
Still, forcing students to pay these fees does not solve the issue at hand - not all students will take advantage of the services funded by these mandatory fees.
This is exactly the point. Starting out small - charging UA students $27 a semester for services they may not use - might not make that much of a dent financially.
But start tacking on tuition raises and mandatory fees on top of those tuition payments - namely fees for Cat Tran and tickets for basketball games - and the UA is going to have a mob of angry students on its hands.
Charles Franz, program coordinator for Parking and Transportation, said he wished he could have a raise and give one to Cat Tran employees as well. However, because transportation functions on a set budget - $1.5 million a year, $325,000 which goes to Cat Tran, not including personnel wages - Franz probably won't get that raise anytime soon.
Still, drivers' wages have had nothing to do with the service being free. Even if Cat Tran thought it could expand its budget and pay its drivers more money, would making the entire student body pay fees for the shuttle be the solution? Considering only about 700 people use the shuttle service each day, probably not.
Charging students for services like Cat Tran is not the solution to the lack of financial support provided for the service. Perhaps Cat Tran could require its riders to purchase a pass for the year. Even those who might not use the service daily could purchase some sort of weekly or daily pass. This would help alleviate some of the concerns Cat Tran employees have expressed regarding low wages and set budgets.
Clearly, Cat Tran employees ought to be taken seriously when they complain about low wages. However, mandatory student fees are not the solution to their problem.
