The Student Required Fee Advisory Council met Monday night, approving fee increases for University Recreation and the Student Health Center.
Another day, another fee increase.
This is certainly news to University students, as things that affect students’ check books often are. But this event’s newsworthiness has no bearing on how utterly unsurprising this development is to anyone who actually pays attention to how this University works.
We are not anti-fee. We enjoy the University and love the amenities it has to offer. We use the Student Union, the library and our sidewalks nearly every day, and we wouldn’t trade the University experience for anything.
And we do not dispute the necessity of the fees recommended Tuesday night — OK, maybe we have questions about the need to bail out University Recreation every time it does its best Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac impression — but there’s no doubt keeping the Health Center up to par is and should be a priority.
What we don’t understand is why there has to be a Student Required Fee Advisory Council to express student opinion when the option to hold a vote on the subject is readily available — be it through the semestrial Student Government elections or through PAWS like when we elect our Homecoming kings and queens. There are flaws with allowing a sample of students greater than the bare majority represented on the SRFAC — fees often fail when students vote on them — but none of these flaws outweighs the cost of allowing a group of elite oligarchs the veneer of credibility afforded to them by the Council.
Ultimately, the SRFAC is simply unnecessary — most students would understand bypassing a student vote when the University needs to increase Health Center fees.
Nobody should have a problem with the University playing daddy and deciding what’s best for us when the quality of our health care is at stake.
But what remains to be seen is why we need a committee that exists only to eliminate student choice whenever the University wishes to administer non-essential fees.
A committee that purports to in some way communicate the wishes of the student body but nonetheless allows University administrators to vote on the matters before the committee just doesn’t pass our smell test.
We do not dispute the committee’s findings might occasionally represent the opinions of the student body — after all broken clocks are correct twice a day — but to suggest the Student Required Fee Committee is in some way better than allowing the students to actually vote is at best farcical.
The tragedy is that SG President Colorado Robertson can stop this farce.
He hasn’t. So maybe it’s time for the SG Senate to step in and write some legislation that relegates the SRFAC’s clown shoes to the dust bin of University history.
After all, the worst thing that will happen is our fees will go up anyway — and there won’t be any pretense that students had any control to begin with.
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Contact the Editorial Board at editor@lsureveille.com
Our View: SRFAC nickels, dimes students without vote
Published: Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Updated: Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Here is an idea, why don't we cut off our own feet so we can cut costs and not need to pay for shoes. Because that's the only alternative left, everything else has been explored!
I was a little apprehensive when it comes to Colorado Robertson and student government, but ya know what.... He is making things happen and working hard for the students. The majority of students who enjoy all aspects of LSU not just the things that one person cares about like the people who go after people in THE REVEILLE with your editorials!