By John C. Barentine
Arizona Daily Wildcat
October 29, 1997

Voters need specifics on fee

Editor:

Once again the UA is living up to its nature as a governing entity by coming to feed at the public trough, encouraged by low voter turnouts in recent years that have been friendly to fee hikes. This time they want us to cough up over $30 million to fund Memorial Student Union renovations. Mind you, there has yet to be any substantive plan advanced to give us an idea of what that money would pay for. The game has become, "Give us the money now, and well tell you how it will be spent later."

ASUA leaders have stated in this publication that the money will be extracted from the student body one way or another. If the referendum doesn't pass the University will ostensibly fund our "share" of the cost with bonds. This will eventually cause tuition to rise. In essence, we're going to get screwed no matter what happens; ASUA's position seems to be that if we make the kind gesture of voluntarily dropping our trousers by adopting the fee, we can strike a deal to make it hurt less.

Curiously, the Integrated Instructional Facility (IIF) project will cost approximately what students are being asked to contribute through the fee increase. Tuition is already set to rise as the result of bonding for the IIF. Seeing as how a study conducted for the Board of Regents determined that the IIF is unnecessary, why not just eliminate it completely? If it were abandoned tomorrow, we could slash our debt by one-half, making the fee initiative moot. However, the propagandists in the UA administration who so deftly forced the IIF down the throats of the students in the first place simply couldn't allow that.

It would be tough for the University to justify gouging its students twice for two building projects to inquisitive local news media if the students rejected the Union fee. For the average student who spends 4.5 years here, the proposed fee means an additional $360 cost to go to school here; for some students on the financial brink, this could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. At some point, the students have make it known that they're not going to take this kind of action anymore.

That point could well be now.

You can send a powerful message next month by joining me in voting "NO" on the Student Union fee referendum.

John C. Barentine
Physics senior