As university leaders decide whether to increase student fees to cover energy costs in an emergency meeting today, they should keep one thing in mind: The proposal earlier this semester by university President Dan Mote that the university examine increasing faculty fees to get rid of the disparity between how much students and faculty pay to use the same campus facilities.
Currently, students pay far more money to use Shuttle-UM, the Campus Recreation Center and other facilities than faculty do.
In fact, faculty are given the chance to opt out of paying certain fees for the campus services they do not care to use. That is not the case for students.
And now, the energy bill crisis is falling too much on students. Dining hall food price increases, Resident Life program cuts and summer fee increases all threaten to deplete the finances of students. Faculty should have to share in this burden, especially considering they already have an easy way out of paying hefty mandatory fees.
Raise faculty fees enough so students will only see half of the increase they would otherwise. Faculty rely on campus facilities and services just as much as students do. The need to pay this energy bill rests evenly on the two groups – the way the university gathers money to do so should reflect such a reality.
Students have most recently had their fees raised by $25 this year. If the committee decides to add $16.05 more today, fees for fiscal year 2007 will have gone up by $86.05 – the largest increase in the past five years, discounting a rising technology fee introduced in 2003.
But if the university were to split the fee increase between faculty and students evenly, making students responsible for half and faculty responsible for the other half, then the burden would be a lot less on everyone.
In addition, this split would start chipping away at the goal of balancing cost responsibilities.
If the university does not split the fee hike more evenly rather than putting it all on students, it will only show it is more willing to burden students than it is to burden faculty. But this university is primarily for students, and there is no reason faculty should so easily escape a cost that affects everyone and should therefore be everyone’s responsibility.
