By Kirk Sibley
Arizona Daily Wildcat
October 29, 1997

Student fee shows lack of creativity

Editor:

Students wake up! There's an important referendum coming down the pipe at you and you need to be aware of what it entails: an additional $40, making the tuition at this University the highest one in the state. So what's an extra $40 when it will get you a new student union? Fourty bucks more than you need to pay, that's what! Now the University is proposing that you, the student, spend $40 a semester and invest it in a capital expenditure for the university. I thought that was what donors are for? Their argument is that it would provide the necessary continual flow of money to support the 60+ million dollars required to build the new student union.

I call it mismanagement because the administrators are getting into a pattern of relying upon additional asking students for money, instead of lobbying for it elsewhere. If students are ever going to have a voice on this campus, it will be through their dollars. The administrators seemed very creative when they needed to fund the IIF project, but when asked for money for the student union, everyone seemed to be out of ideas. If a fee gets attached to your bill, do you think it will just disappear when this is all over with? Probably not. Once the university gets used to having this as a reliable source of income, it will just find new ways to spend it. It will be a lot easier trying to prevent the passing of this fee then trying to have it removed later on, and you can count on that. ASU students were not charged this fee for their student union.

I have another proposal: if you as part of this student body want a new student union, refuse this fee, and force this institution to use some of the fund raising know-how it has used in the past when it really wants something bad enough to get us all the new student union we are entitled to. Use your money wisely. Just say no.

Kirk Sibley
Marketing/MIS Senior