Student Life Fee Up $22 From Last Year

By Robert McQueen Jun. 5, 2009

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Reddit
• Email
• Print

The Student Life Fee goes up to $272 next year, an increase of $22 (8.8 percent) from the previous year’s $250. All students pay this fee in order to support campus student services.

Of the $22 increase, $14 will fund student activities, and $8 will go to the Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation, said Dean for Student Life Chris Colombo.

In exchange for the DAPER fee increase, students will no longer be charged $40 over the summer to use the gym, as they were in 2007 or 2008. The Graduate Student Council requested that the summer fee, which only some students paid, be rolled into the Student Life Fee which all students pay.

“We expect to see a large increase in the number of funding applications next year,” said Undergraduate Association President Michael A. Bennie ’10, who has experience working on the UA Finance Board.

GSC and UA presidents agreed to the $22 fee increase at an Academic Council meeting late last year.

The $22 increase amounts to an extra $220,000 distributed to the Division for Student Life. The money that doesn’t go to DAPER will be divided up among student groups including the UA, GSC, DAPER, the Large Event Fund, and the Assisted Recurring Cultural and Diversity Events Fund (ARCADE). The UA and GSC have their own separate funding boards which allocate money to student groups.

The GSC’s additional funds will be spent on student activities and GSC events like Graduate Orientation, Grad Gala, and the Grad Rat, said GSC President Alex Hamilton Chan G.

This is the third year in a row that the fee has increased.

Previous fee hikes in 2006, 2007

The 2006 increase was the first since the fee’s introduction in 2002.

UA and GSC leaders negotiated that increase directly with former Dean for Student Life Larry G. Benedict, said Andrew T. Lukmann ’07, who was UA President at the time and is a Tech senior editor.

“Dean Benedict wanted to raise the fee to fund the construction that was happening at DAPER at that time,” he said.

In 2007, the Student Life Fee was raised to account for inflation. The 2007 increase was meant to be sufficient to keep the fee constant for several years, said former UA President Martin F. Holmes ’08.