The Student Fee Review Board delayed voting on a policy amendment that would allow it to reduce any department’s student fee funding up to 50 percent.
The board, which is made up of three graduate students and four undergraduates, decided to delay the vote during a Friday meeting because departments that already submitted their funding requests didn’t expect to be cut more than 5 percent, ASUNM President Monika Roberts said.
“I felt that to be consistent and fair to everyone applying in the process, we can’t just change something and go into it,” she said. “It needs to be at least put into the ears of the departments so they know what could potentially happen.”
The SFRB approves fees of about $546.96 per student every year. SFRB policies only allow for departments receiving student fees to be put on a 5 percent “probation,” meaning their share of student fees is reduced for the year. According to the SFRB policies, the board can put departments on probation if there are serious operational problems.
“If they’re put on probation, if the board feels like there is something one of these recurring funding departments isn’t doing right, they can recommend reducing the recommendation up to 5 percent,” Roberts said. “Basically what the amendment is changing is that they can reduce their recurring funds up to 50 percent.”
Graduate and Professional Students Association President Lissa Knudsen said the “probation” allowance should be increased to 50 percent to allow the Board more flexibility when allocating funds across campus.
There are certain departments — including Athletics, CAPS, and the Student Union Building — which are guaranteed a set amount of funds every year. Athletics gets the second largest chunk of fees at $37.04 per student, right behind the Student Health and Counseling Center, which gets $96.14 per student. Other UNM groups aren’t guaranteed funding.
“If the Women’s Resource Center asked for any money, we could say, ‘Sorry, hard budgetary times; you’re not getting any money,’” Knudsen said. “But, if the Student Health Center, the Student Union Building or Athletics — if we felt we wanted to direct our funds somewhere else, we wouldn’t be able to do that.”
Knudsen said recent issues in the Athletics Department influenced the proposed changes.
“I think students should have the right to make decisions about student money,” she said. “I’m not saying that we would take that opportunity even if we had that opportunity to cut athletics by 100 percent — I don’t think students would do that.”
Graduate and professional students will also vote after Christmas about whether their student fees should be allocated to the Athletics Department, but the allocation could only be changed if the SFRB changes its policies.
Roberts said the policy, if approved, probably won’t go into effect until next year.
“I’m an advocate for this not getting put into place this time around because I think it’s not fair to the departments it applies to,” she said. “Especially with the conversations we had on Friday, I think if we’re going to implement it, it’s going to be next year.”
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Knudsen also proposed to revoke the right of the University president to approve SFRB policy amendments.
Roberts said she doesn’t know if President Schmidly would give up his oversight on how student fees are spent.
“I know with some other schools the reason their administration checks it is because it’s sort of like a checks and balances thing,” Roberts said. “I think it’s hard to say.”
Knudsen said she scheduled a meeting with Paul Krebs, vice president of Athletics, to talk about the recent department issues.
“I hope that we can move forward on how we can benefit the University, work on our reputation, and work on putting our priorities in line with the University’s mission,” Knudsen said.
