The Board of Regents last week retracted a proposal to fund Libraries with a student fee hike next year, but held on to a proposal to increase student fees to fund Athletics.
The University plans to loan Athletics $1.2 million from general funds in order to pay off a mounting deficit brought on by decreased ticket sales, the buy-out of former head football coach Mike Locksley’s contract and the subsequent hiring of new head coach Bob Davie.
“Our men’s basketball team won the Mountain West Conference and the ski team recently competed for the national championship and I want to be clear that these are things to be proud of, and things we are proud of, but … ASUNM does not support student fees being used to assist in paying a debt incurred by any department,” ASUNM President Jaymie Roybal said Friday at the Budget Summit.
President David Schmidly’s original plan called for an overall increase of 8 percent in student fees, while the Student Fee Review Board proposal called for a 3.4 percent increase. The current proposal would raise fees by 5.6 percent.
About 100 people gathered outside the SUB Thursday to protest the proposed increase in student fees, and ASUNM drafted a resolution Wednesday calling on the regents to back off from the proposal. The resolution was presented to the regents at Friday’s Budget Summit.
Student Regent Jake Wellman proposed the $50 fee increase be spread over three years, increasing $17 a year rather than $50 all at once, but the proposal was voted down. The recommended $50 increase next year would represent a roughly $3.1 million increase in funding to Athletics.
Vice President of Athletics Paul Krebs said the student fee increase isn’t a bailout, and that the money for the loan will come from general funds, not student fees.
Krebs said this additional funding would contribute to Lobo sports teams’ success, and that student fees represent only 10 percent of Athletics’ overall budget. He said students at UNM pay some of the lowest student fees for Athletics of any school in the Mountain West Conference.
GPSA Representative and SFRB member Matthew Rush said the increase could start a trend in subsequent years of raising student fees to pay for Athletics.
“This concerns me, not only for the cost to students that did not ask for it, did not support it and are not included in deciding how to reduce it, but also in terms of planning for the future,” Rush said.
Roybal said the administration needs to trust the SFRB and Strategic Budget Leadership Team to make decisions on how student fees are spent. She said that to disregard these recommendations is to disregard the students’ voice.
“This is the very reason students lose trust in those who run their University,” she said. “There is a great lack of trust that exists on this campus between the student body, the administration and the Board of Regents.”
But Vice President of the Board of Regents Don Chalmers said the regents respect the SFRB, and take into account student opinions when making decisions.
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“When all is said and done the blame or credit, usually blame, lies with the regents,” he said. “We certainly would not be doing our job unless we listen to the recommendations coming from the Student Fee Review Board. But in the end we have to make the decision based on what we believe is best for the University.”
Undergraduates this year paid $1,158 in fees, $486.49 of which was set by the Student Fee Review Board and $487.50 of which is a facilities fee used primarily to repay bonds issued for construction and renovation of buildings. If the current proposal passes in the final budget meeting on April 27, fees will increase $50, plus any additional increase in facilities fees. The SFRB 2012-2013 recommendations included a $81.75 allocation for Athletics, the same amount Athletics received this year, and a $33.45 allocation for Libraries, a $4.18 increase from the amount Libraries received this year. The regents’ proposal would tack on an additional $50 fee for Athletics.
The regents decided Friday to give a general fund allocation of $463,697 to Libraries next year, in lieu of raising student fees $27 for Libraries.
The board preliminarily approved the president’s revised proposal 4-1 on Friday, but the issue still requires a final vote on April 27. Regents Jack Fortner and Carolyn Abeita were absent from the Budget Summit.
