Utah State Student Fees Cover Campus Life

Various departments receive a portion of student fees every year to remain operating.

The fees help cover activities, buildings, athletics, buses, technology, health, computers, recreation, libraries, music and theater.

 

Matt Ekins, student advocate for the Associated Students of Utah State University, said, "The overall process of reviewing the fees and administering them is detailed and done regularly. Initially, each fee was voted on by the student body at large."

 

Gary Chambers, assistant vice president for Student Life, heads the allocation of student fees.

 

"As each fee-receiving area gets their dollars, the dollars are supposed to go into an account that will earmark the receipt of that money," he said.

 

Every unit's fee-receiving operations are chaired by a student, who is over a fee committee board, and an administrator from the department.

 

"They are responsible to work together with the student fee committee to decide how those dollars are going to be spent, and so there is an administrative fee committee in each of those areas, and they talk about those disbursements," Chambers said.

 

Ekins said, "The students' representatives that sit on each committee work hard to do a good job of evaluating the need and weighing the wishes of the student body."

 

Computers:

 

Bob Bayn, administrator over computers, said the Computer Fee Committee is chaired by ASUSU Academic Vice President Ericka Ensign. Computer fee budgeting covers replacement of some computers in the open-access labs, operating costs for various management groups in the labs, and the central computing facility, which includes the e-mail system, the modem pool, campus network, Help Desk, kiosks and wireless network access.

 

The computer fee is projected to collect $1,668,805 during this school year.

 

"The money gets split into numerous budgets across campus after the committee approves the fund budget, so lots of people are involved in specific decisions about how to spend various portions of the budget," Bayn said.

 

Music:

 

Bruce Saperston, head of the music department, said, "It should be understood from the onset that the music department is not provided with funding from the university for its numerous performances."

 

Through the student fees that are received, the music department provides about 50 performances during a 9-month academic year.

 

Production costs can range from $500 for smaller chamber music events to more than $3,000 for major concerts and student opera productions, Saperston said.

 

Expenses might include advertising and printed programs, rental and purchase of music, an evening manager, technician staff, lights, sound and stage.

 

"Numerous university-owned instruments are used in these productions and must be properly maintained and tuned. Opera theater productions require sets, costumes and special lighting requirements," he said.

 

During the last academic year, the music department received about $60,000.

 

"It is important to understand that this is extremely minimal funding considering that it must cover the production expenses of all the different areas in the music department," Saperston said. "We understand that this cannot be the case here at the present time and feel that the student fee is the best means of meeting the need of the general university student as well as the department's.

 

"The primary benefit of the student fee is that it provides the general university student with free admission to all music and theater events during thesemester," he said.

 

Athletics:

 

The athletics fee generates about $1,400,000 for the athletic department.

 

Ken Peterson, administrator over Athletics, said, "We use this fee to pay for athletic scholarships."

 

The total Athletics scholarship budget is about $2,150,000, including the $1,400,000.

"Rance [Pugmire, director of Athletics,] and I, as well as the coaches, determine how this money is distributed," Peterson said. "The athletic program would suffer greatly without the support of the fees."

 

Theater arts:

 

Colin Johnson, head of the theater arts department, said, "All fees collected for the theater arts portion of the fee goes toward producing the four main stage and Conservatory season stage productions of Utah State Theatre."

 

The costs of producing these plays are similar to those the music department encounters.

 

Play production costs include royalties, scripts, scenery, properties, costumes and costume cleaning, makeup, publicity and additional personnel, such as musicians, guest musical directors and choreographers.

 

"A portion is returned to responsible students in the form of work grants to assist in running the program -- property-shop and costume-stock managers, a house manager, and so forth," Johnson said. "No amount of the fee is used for the summer Old Lyric Repertory Program, which is independently budgeted.

 

"Because the student fee makes up about two-thirds of our production budget, we are challenged to maintain a balance between serving the tastes of the campus community on the one hand and respecting our own professional and artistic integrity by producing work that is worthy on another.

 

"The fee allows us to diversify our choices by including more challenging, provocative works worthy of a quality university, its students, and the educational mission of the program," Johnson said.

 

By Staci Peterson; stacipete@cc.usu.edu