At the Student Government Association meeting Feb. 4, university officials discussed three topics that will impact all students on campus: parking fees, recycling and tuition.

New “Security Fee”

Keith Lamb, vice president of student affairs, and Valarie Maxwell, interim vice president for administration and finance, discussed increases in fees.

One change they presented, a change proposed by SGA President Ellie Gunderson, was the creation of a security fee — $50 per long-term semester and $25 per summer semester — to replace the $110 parking fee. Under this proposal, students would no longer be required to display a parking decal, but all students would have to pay the fee, generating about $700,000 in income for parking and “campus safety needs.”

At a later meeting, University President Suzanne Shipley said, “There’s now a lot more cost around security. In doing that, it makes the security $50 and parking was over $100 and the security fee is available for financial aid. Because it’s a fee that distributes across all students and you don’t have a choice if you pay it or not, if you enroll that gets added to your cost of attendance. You can have aid for it. So there will be some students that won’t have to pay the whole $50, but with parking they had to pay the whole parking [fee].”

This fee has been approved by SGA and could be taking effect in September 2019. The parking fee has gone up over the last three years.

Shipley said, “The parking fee kept going up so that we could afford to keep paving lots and build a parking deck in a few years. And there are a lot of costs associated with parking and being at the university that every student takes advantage of. The parking fee pays for the police. And the whole concept of security is a whole lot different than it use to be.”

She also said university officials have had to hire several new staff members for computer security.

“We decided to take what was a fairly large parking fee that was a applied to only those who parked and turn it into a security fee that every student would pay because every student takes advantage of a lot of the things that the parking fee paid for,” Shipley said.

These changes will be proposed to the Board of Regents later this month and Lamb said the decision would be finalized in May.

Recycling

During the meeting, senators voted for SGA to use $5oo for recycling services for the semester.

Jose Torres, SGA secretary and bilingual education junior, said the plan is to connect with the city to offer recycling services on campus again.

“It is going to be more expensive, but SGA will provide some of that money,” Torres said.

Vice President of Student Affairs Keith Lamb said he will find the remaining $1,500 to return recycling services on campus.

Tuition

Lamb and Maxwell also discussed a proposal to increase tuition costs.

While current students have their tuition rates (not fees) locked in, incoming freshmen would be paying $2,033.25 per semester for 15 hours compared to $1,995 in university designated tuition this year. State tuition rates would not change.

Student Opinions

Vanessa Quinones, radiology freshman, attended her first SGA meeting to see what is planned for the semester. She said the tuition fees going up is something that caught her attention during the meeting.

“I guess it’s kind of fair since we are getting new things on campus,” Quinones said. “I guess it won’t affect people [students].”

As for the recycling issue Quinones hopes to see recycling bin in the residence halls.

Quinones said, “A lot of people do recycle so I think they [the recycling bins] should be brought back on campus.”

JJ Dougherty, education senior, attended the meeting to represent the organization Kappa Delta Pi during the meeting.

Dougherty said, “The parking decals and the recycling is what most caught my attention. The parking decals because they are really expensive.”

As for recycling, Dougherty would like to see recycling bins all over campus.

Dougherty said, “They [senators and SGA officials] talked a lot about putting them in the residence halls but some of us don’t stay on campus. I would like to see them all over campus. I know that can cost more, but if I see them around campus I will make the effort to use them.”

CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this story, Valarie Maxwell’s name was misspelled. The Wichitan regrets the error.