University student governments presented a new facilities fee proposal at a town hall meeting on Friday that would charge students $75 per semester.
The new proposal would create a five-person student board to oversee the implementation of the fee, which would not be charged until the first of the facilities were opened. The fee would pay for new facilities over 30 years, though student government presidents have previously said the fee would more likely be permanent.
Senators Andres Cano, Joe Pettinato and Dustin Volz, who have previously led efforts in opposition of the facilities fee, did not attend the town hall meeting but held their own meeting instead.
They welcomed other senators to attend their meeting, where they stated in a public e-mail they would discuss “other issues of great importance” to the Downtown campus.
“Now is not the appropriate time to levy an unnecessary financial burden upon students who do not wish to increase their cost of attendance at ASU,” they said in the e-mail. “We also feel that ASASUD has repeatedly failed to address the concerns of Downtown students because the facilities fee has dominated the majority of our efforts and discourse.”
In an e-mail reply, President Tania Mendes questioned why they would not attend the informative meeting on the fee that directly affects their constituents and said she found the senators’ dissent disappointing.
“I would like to remind you that ASASUD has made great accomplishments this semester whether you have chosen to be apart of them or not,” she said in the e-mail.
During the meeting, Georgeana Montoya, dean of student affairs for the Downtown campus, stressed the importance and necessity of approving the facilities fee to the ASASUD Senate.
“You do need additional space for your endeavors,” she said. “Whatever we invest in is only going to be better for the University.”
Following a presentation of the current Downtown campus’ facilities by Mendes, Chuck Conley, a senator at the Tempe campus University Student Government, asked the ASASUD president why new facilities needed to be built now.
“The University is a large family, and as a large family, you have to understand that the middle child and the youngest child do not always get the newest toys every year,” Conley said.
During the town hall meeting, Brendan O’Kelly, president of Undergraduate Student Government, who has previously opposed a facilities fee, said he thinks the five student governments could benefit more from communicating to the ASU administration what they want from a facilities fee than by fighting to stop the fee and then seeing ASU implement it on its own.
“We have to fight for what we want, and we have to get it on our own terms,” he said.
The proposal comes a month after the Senate rejected a previous fee proposal by a vote of 11-2.
Following the town hall meeting, the Senate held their first meeting of the semester short two senators after the resignations of Amy Villarreal, a freshmen representative, and Justin Hoffman, of Barrett, the Honors College.
“It’s really unfortunate that we’ve lost a lot of people,” said Vice President Beth Wischnia at the meeting.
Since the beginning of the fall semester, ASASUD has had four senator resignations, been unable to fill all 14 senate seats and also had resignations on the executive board.
Hoffman, a nonprofit leadership and management junior, said he resigned because he didn’t think ASASUD was a good expenditure of his time. Focus on the facilities fee has kept the Senate from working on other issues, such as implementing a rental laptop program, said Hoffman, who opposed the facilities fee last semester.
“All of these other things are being overlooked because this one issue is taking up all of the time and this issue, even though it was voted on, is re-manifesting itself,” he said.
Contact the reporter at salvador.rodriguez@asu.edu
