Opinion: Editorial
Exposing the gravy train
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Also by Badger Herald Editorial Board:
- The Invisible Man Award: Wyndham Manning (May 7, 2009)
- The People's Choice Award: Jacqueline Hitchon et. al (May 7, 2009)
- The Lifetime Achievement Award: ASM (May 7, 2009)
- Honest representation (May 5, 2009)
- Junger for ASM Chair (May 5, 2009)
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One day in late January, the mailbox snaps shut with new bills. As a student files through the parcels, she comes upon a University of Wisconsin envelope containing an absurdly bright tuition bill. As she casually opens the bill this time, she’s shocked to see what seems to be an increase in her tuition that must be a recent addition. With a confused scoff, she remarks, “What are segregated fees?” Until recently, the delineation between student tuition and segregated fees, the mandatory charge that pays for University Health Services, the Wisconsin Union and various student groups, has been obscured on tuition bills, with both lumped together under one figure. However, starting with the next tuition bill, the difference will be made quite clear. A provision in the freshly signed state budget requires the University of Wisconsin System to clearly delineate segregated fees from tuition on tuition bills. In addition, UW must create a website that clearly explains what entities are funded by segregated fees, as well as the breakdown of nonallocable and allocable distributions. A web address to UW’s site will be printed on every tuition bill. This provision is important, especially considering the rising cost of this burdensome fee. This year UW tuition increased by $330 — around 5.5 percent — while segregated fees increased by approximately $140 — around 15 percent. Students most likely had no idea segregated fees went up during this time because unlike tuition increases, hikes in segregated fees are rarely explained or publicized. While students may be able to search the UW System or ASM websites and stumble upon an explanation for the $429 per semester fee, the information should be readily provided, rather than tucked away in rarely visited web pages. The fact that the student body has been left in the dark with regard to segregated fees is an absolute shame. While students are more likely to act on an issue if it directly affects them, segregated fees are largely absent from the campus radar. A clear explanation of segregated fees and how they impact student finances may finally wake up the student body and give the issue the proper attention it needs.
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1) the increase in seg fees is from non-allocable fees 2) the chair of SSFC has written articles in this very paper explaining where seg fees go 3) most students don’t care about their seg fees. They bitch about them but when it comes time to take any action, they just don’t do anything. Remember last year when 4% of the student body came out to vote on the seg free increase for the new union building projects? That is where $100 of the $140 seg fee increase is from. We are paying $100 per year for projects that won’t get underway for several years. Freshmen (assuming they graduate in 4 years) will end up paying $576 in seg fees for union improvements.
It’s not just the small portion (12%) that SSFC and ASM have some power over — it’s the unconscionable $192 per student per year for 30 years fee recently voted in by referendum (on which only a small percentage of students voted and which failed twice before finally passing). It was for the Memorial Union and Union South. Only now, with the new state budget signed do we see that more than 60% of that money is going to demolish Union South and put up a new building that no one will go to. It is extremely unfair and both ASM and the Chancellor should be working together to kill the project before the first shovel is put in the ground.
Come on, Badger Herald, look into the UHS, Rec Sports and other non-allocable budgets for fraud, waste and abuse. For instance, we have MSC, MCSC, the Office of Equity and Diversity, Housing and the Dean of Students all with staff to address diversity issues. So why does UHS spend our seg fees on a sub-unit that has this mission: “By defining student health in the broadest sense of the term, University Health Services (UHS) takes a bold and groundbreaking stance that views issues of race, gender, class, ability and sexual orientation as critical to the health of our shared campus community. The task of co-creating an authentically inclusive community — one which addresses fully the layered and complex reasons why students of color, international students, differently abled students and LGBT students have historically been marginalized and oppressed — is a responsibility that we all share.” Who even knows about it?
Look at the non-allocable as closely as you do the allocable (SSFC hearings) budgets and you will find many surprises and questionable expenditures - and may wind up saving students real money.
Quit complaining. If you feel that you have been “left in the dark”, do something about it that matters. Join SSFC. Protest SSFC. Stop writing lame editorials that lack full perspective.
If you were not aware that the Union South plan involved a new building you were not paying attention. Also UW’s fees and instate tuition are both near the lowest in the Big Ten. You are getting steak for hamburger prices. Quit bitching about every little thing.
to 9:01: Are you stupid or something? You want JOURNALISTS to stop criticizing government if they’re not a part of it?
I don’t even know where to start…
How many students actually receive their tuition bills in the mail? Obviously not very many, considering how few students vote in ASM elections or protest tuition increases.
Frank Rojas wrote:
“If you were not aware that the Union South plan involved a new building you were not paying attention. ”
Oh, I knew Frank — what was not commonly known — and the Union did its best to not tell us — was the break down of new Union South vs fixing up Memorial Union. You have alums giving the UW money left and right (over a billion in less than 6 years. Just this week $85 million for the business school). That’s where the money should come from.
As for the referndum, the Union lumped it all in together because it knew that if they could, people would ONLY vote for the amount that would bring the Memorial Union up to building code. The referendum failed twice and kept coming back. They offered an inducement to most current students that they wouldn’t have to pay at all (seniors) or just half (sophomores and juniors) of what freshmen and all future generations would pay.
It stinks to high heaven
As a former ASM council member (and current VP at an investment bank in NYC):
Most of the people elected to ASM have zero experience in budgeting, accounting, or prioritization.
When I was on ASM, the process was that people showed up with funding requests, and we voted on them with an up or down vote. The total budget was the sum of everything that got approved.
There is no control on the total size of the budget, and the students don’t like to turn groups down (because then they scream bloody murder). So there is no sense of tradeoffs or accountability.
It is a TERRIBLE system.
Investment Banker,
The system has improved a lot since you were there. The total allocable budget went down this year. They have kicked some groups off the gravy train and slashed others. ASM is really doing a much better job than when it was an open checkbook