Jason Poreda Opinions Assistant

Last week, our student leaders were driving down the field to score a much-needed touchdown in the form of a student activity fee, but right as they reached the goal line, they fumbled.

For months we've been hearing rumors that this secretive group, the Collaboration Board, if you will, was determining whether a student activity fee is the right way for the UA to go. Our student leaders had apparently thrown in the towel on trying to find money in more creative places and went right for what is commonly considered the last resort, a student fee. If that weren't enough, as soon as they decided that they were going to look into a fee, they went right for the prize, asking for a $25 fee, a venture that would in total exceed the $1 million mark.

I don't care who you are; that is a hell of a lot of money for one small group to be in charge of, let alone a student group. No matter what the reason or how just the goal is, if the Collaboration Board didn't think that was going to turn heads, it was being very naive. That goal, to get more events on campus, is something the group has hidden behind just as much as the fact that students will have to vote on this fee before it would ever be enacted.

If the sheer amount of money involved weren't enough, the board is trying to fast-track this fee in order to get it on the ballot this March when everyone votes for new leaders in the Associated Students of the University of Arizona. Why? Because this is when the most students will go to the polls, to make it a decision of the students, even if less than 10 percent of the total population makes it.

Whether or not it's the students who make the final decision about this fee, it is not the student body that will distribute the money, and that is something the board seems to overlook. In fact, no one on the board knows whose task this would be. They have ideas about what they want to do, but nothing concrete has been established. They have yet to decide if they want to form a new group to allocate the money or whose account the money will be in once they actually get the money. These are decisions that should be made before even thinking about giving a small fortune to anyone, let alone students.

Despite being cloaked in shadows behind a student vote, it is painfully clear that the Collaboration Board desperately wants this fee to go forward. This was evident from the fact that when the results from the research company hired to gauge student opinion on the fee came in, the board jumped ahead after only receiving a one-page executive summary of the results. They were all abuzz, claiming that 84 percent of students supported their brainchild.

Instead of looking into the results further and really examining the data collected, like responsible leaders should, they decided to go for the gold. It took a Wildcat reporter who managed to get the more detailed 30-page report to point out what the numbers really meant and that they were not as favorable as they originally seemed to be.

As it turned out, only about 30 percent of the student body, or at least those surveyed, would definitely support a fee of $25. With all the importance surrounding this decision, the Collaboration Board seemed to shrug this off and continued to push for the fee.

Wednesday, the ASUA senate will decide whether to put this issue on the ballot; let's hope they can see that this is not even close to being ready for a student vote, and more time is needed to work out the kinks the board has not.

If anything good came out of this debacle, it's that we found out that we are not ready for a fee of this magnitude. The Collaboration Board is made up of some of the best and brightest student leaders the UA has to offer, and all they had to do was decide if the fee was a good idea or not; imagine what could happen were they responsible for over $1 million. That is a scary thought.

Jason Poreda is a political science and communication senior. He was an ASUA senator in 2002-2003 year and can be reached at mailto:letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.