Gravy train: Attack of the Clones

by Badger Herald Editorial Board

Monday, April 21, 2008 00:00

In October 2006, after multiple failed elections, the Wisconsin Union finally succeeded in pushing through a massive increase in student-segregated fees to pay for extravagant and unnecessary upgrades to Memorial Union and Union South.

This year and next year, University of Wisconsin students are being forced to pay an extra $48 per semester for the project. Starting in fall 2009, that figure will increase to $96 per student per semester for the next 30 years.

At the time, this newspaper argued fervently against the Student Union Initiative, which we continue to believe is far too expensive. We also believe the Union effectively took advantage of students, attempting to legitimize their coercive fundraising efforts with the Associated Students of Madison’s spurious paper-ballot election, which featured a less-than-7-percent voter turnout.

Unfortunately, however, student-segregated fees are an attractive source of funding for university-related groups who prefer not to raise funds through voluntary donations or other commendable sources of income. The Division of Recreational Sports — which, like the Union, already receives student-segregated fees to cover many of its expenses — has decided that it, too, could benefit from siphoning students’ money for the next 30 years or so.

They want to raise an estimated $60 million for a new Natatorium facility — and they want all that funding to come from student-segregated fees, in the comparatively modest amount of $30 per student per semester for, again, three decades.

Fortunately, the ASM shared governance committee — which heard an informal proposal from Recreational Sports on April 1 — has some reservations with fully funding the project, committee chair Jeff Wright told The Badger Herald last week, adding students were “really skeptical of the plans.”

We hope that skepticism prevails as Recreational Sports pitches its plan to ASM and the Student Council, and as they prepare to get a referendum placed on the spring 2009 ASM ballot.

Our qualm is not with renovating the Natatorium per se. It is inarguably an old, outdated building that could use some improvements. But student-segregated fees are not — or, more accurately, should not be — a bottomless bank account for massive renovation projects. At most, they should be limited to modestly funding student-centric services that are fundamental to a first-class university and that could not exist without them.

Continuously escalating tuition figures are a constant enemy to a public university that many of Wisconsin’s families already cannot afford. Jacking up mandatory student-segregated fees — especially at these amounts, and for decades at a time — to pay for renovations that are both unnecessary and amenable to other funding sources is not a practice we are willing to condone.

It is not an exaggeration to say some qualified Wisconsinites may be unable to afford this university because of the 2006 Student Union Initiative. While it is too late to slam the brakes on that runaway gravy train, this nasty precedent should be broken sooner rather than later.