USGD held a town hall meeting Monday to discuss a proposed athletics fee of $75 per semester. The fee would replace funding currently diverted to athletics from student tuition and would free up approximately $10 million of tuition funds.
The new fee will be exactly the cost of season tickets, meaning students will not have to purchase season tickets but will no longer have the option of opting out.
USGD President Frank Smith said he hoped the meeting would clear up rumors purportedly circulating about the bill. The primary issue students seem to have with the bill concerns the fact that the fee will be applied only to athletics, Smith said. He hoped the meeting showed students the other benefits of the bill.
“Yes, (the fee) is all going to sports, but look at the benefits over here, too,” Smith said.
The presidents from all four campuses, together with the Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA) president, have been in negotiations with ASU President Michael Crow regarding the reinvestment of the $10 million in tuition funds that would be diverted from athletics. The negotiations include weekend shuttles, pay raises for graduate teaching assistants and free-of-charge graduate school test preparation. Crow has already agreed to freeze in-state tuition, keep out-of-state tuition increases minimal and provide increased amounts of financial aid to students.
Athletics programs currently receive $10 million from student tuition funds. The fee would replace this funding dollar for dollar, allowing the tuition to be used elsewhere. Athletics would, however suffer a revenue loss of $2.5 million from student season ticket sales.
The fee would not include online-only students.
According to GPSA President Megan Fisk, because tuition funds aren’t under student government control, there’s no way to hold the athletics department accountable to students.
If passed, the fee would “give us a seat at the table,” according to Jordan Davis, the USG Tempe president.
That seat would take the shape of an athletics advisory board made up of two undergraduate students from each campus, two graduate students and two alumni. The board would be able to revoke the fee via the Arizona Board of Regents, who will approve the bill this spring if it passes. The same mechanism will be used to ensure that ASU fulfills its half of the negotiations.
The bill will be introduced downtown on Friday at the Senate meeting. Three out of five student legislative bodies — the four campus senates and the graduate student government — must pass the bill for it to move on to the Board of Regents.
A video press release shown at the start of the meeting stated that the fee proposal came after undergraduate student government gathered student feedback. The feedback, however, was not based on the fee. According to Davis, the presidents spoke to students about “the overall game day experience,” but did not mention the potential $150 annual fee.
USGD relied primarily on word of mouth to encourage attendance at the town hall meeting. Cronkite Senator Alexis Kramer said the presidents had posted the video to the Facebook pages of all USG branches. However, as of Monday night, the video was missing from USGD’s page.
“We told everyone we could about (the meeting),” Kramer said.
The senators received notice and paperwork regarding the bill Friday afternoon, according to Kramer. Smith fielded as many questions from his senators as he did from the audience.
Senators will be on Taylor Mall every day this week to speak with students about the fee.
The relative lack of publicization led to low student attendance. Health Sciences major Alicia Thrall, one of about a half-dozen non-USGD affiliated students in attendance, said she only became aware of the meeting the day prior and came to understand more about the bill.
“We’re passionate about understanding why we’re paying more money for something we don’t necessarily support,” Thrall said.
Contact the reporter at noah.b.briggs@asu.edu
