A proposed Student Fee Review Board policy change has once again pitted the graduates against the undergraduates.
The Student Fee Review Board has five undergraduate students and four graduate students who can vote on student fees, but that might change if UNM President David Schmidly accepts a recommendation to change the board to seven undergraduates and two graduates.
GPSA president-elect Katie Richardson said this recommendation threatens to extinguish the SFRB’s graduate student voice.
“Even as the board stands now, graduates need at least one undergrad to agree (to pass) any proposal that we make,” she said in an April 12 interview.
The recommendation comes from a task force Schmidly put together last year. The task force, composed of UNM students and staff, was formed to evaluate and make recommendations on SFRB processes and policy 1310, the policy the board uses to make fee recommendations to the president.
In order to form its recommendations, the task force met with UNM faculty, staff, student-fee-funded organizations, current and past SFRB members, and undergraduate and graduate students.
The task force suggested changing the number of student representatives on the board to nine members. It released a report in October 2010.
The report said the task force recognizes that the change would diminish graduate presence on the board, but the change would be consistent with the ratio of undergraduates to graduates. In 2009, about 19,600 undergraduates and 5,900 graduates were enrolled.
“The current representation of students on the SFRB does not reflect the true composition of students paying mandatory student fees,” the report said. “This change would align student (full-time enrollment) with voting membership to the board and would be consistent with our peer institution — University of Arizona.”
The task force’s recommendations are in the public comment phase, said Carol Stephens, director of the UNM policy office. She said the public comment phase ends on the last day of classes.
Depending on public comments, the amendment will either be passed onto the president for approval or will go back to the task force to be changed.
The policy says that amendments can only be adopted by the President, but three-quarters of SFRB voting members must approve the amendment before it can be submitted to the president.
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Richardson said that if the president changes the board’s representation, it will violate section nine regarding amendments of policy 1310, because three-fourths of the current board did not approve the change. But Stephens said Richardson might have misinterpreted the policy because the president can institute a change at any time.
“If you look to the top, it says ‘Subject to change without notice,’” she said.
ASUNM President and SFRB Chair Laz Cardenas did not respond to the Daily Lobo’s interview requests about the policy change.
Michael Thorning, former ASUNM chief-of-staff and SFRB member, said ASUNM passed a resolution in October 2010 supporting the task force’s recommendation to change the makeup of the board, even though the task force had not released the recommendation for public review.
“I think Laz was advocating it to the task force,” Thorning said.
“The task force was meeting with past and current members of the board to review the process. They talked with all the departments and members on the board. I think the suggestion came out of that process.”
Richardson said GPSA will vote on a resolution next week that encourages the president not to change the board’s makeup and give graduate students a say in how their fees are spent.
Thorning said he doesn’t see a need to change the board’s makeup because ASUNM already has the majority of members.
“I think the suggestion came in a time of frustration, and perhaps if it had come after the process, people might have felt different.”
Richardson said the proposed change puts graduates at a disadvantage and creates tension between ASUNM and GPSA.
“The students sitting on the SFRB take student fees extremely seriously,” she said. “It’s money out of students’ pockets, and we want to make sure that the money is spent well. We expect the same respect back from the president.”
