About 10 percent of students turned out to vote last week in oneof the most divisive fee referendums in campus history, conveying aresounding “No” on three of the six proposed fees.
By wide margins, students rejected a $25 fee to providescholarships to low-income students, a $15 fee to increase retentionefforts and cultural enrichment activities, and $5 to providescholarships to students studying abroad.
Students voted for a $15 fee to sustain Student Health Servicesoperations, a $22 fee to build a new health center and a $10 fee toincrease library hours.
A total of 3,269 students voted March 13-14. It was the first timein campus history that students were asked to vote on more than onefee at a time.
The results of the referendum are only advisory, meaningUniversity President Stephen Weber can decide which fees to assess.California State University Chancellor Charles Reed makes the finaldecision on any new student fees.
If the referendum results are reflected in the final decision,students will pay an additional $47 per semester in tuition startingthis fall.
The big winner of the referendum is Student Health Services. About63 percent of students voted to help support current operations andabout 56 percent voted to help fund a new facility.
“It’s absolutely wonderful — we’re elated,” SHS associatedirector Thomas Wilson said. “We floated into work this morning.”
Right now, students pay $70 per semester for health services. Theadditional $15 per student will help sustain operations at a timewhen health costs are skyrocketing. SHS also plans to expand eveningclinic hours and create a 24-hour nurses’ line with any additionalfunds.
Students have paid a $3 fee to support the SHS facility since thebuilding was constructed in the 1970s. With the added $22 fee, a new,state-of-the-art facility will be built that will be more than twicethe size of the existing building. It will provide more space forpatients and additional services.
By a very slim margin, students also voted to extend the libraryReserve Book Room to 24-hour operations and increase main library andstudent computing center hours to 1 a.m. Sunday through Thursday. Thefee passed 51 percent to 49 percent, separated by 61 votes.
“We’re excited that students have made this a high priority,”Library Dean Connie Dowell said. “It’s really reaffirming to us thatstudents have confidence in the library. We know this was a bigdecision for them.”
A fee to boost retention and cultural enrichment efforts saw thebiggest defeat — roughly 81 percent of students voted against it.Most of the funds from this fee would have supported campus mentoringand tutoring programs and the rest would have been directed towardlectures, performances and events to contribute to the campus’scultural awareness.
Sandra Cook, executive director for enrollment services and one ofthe strongest supporters of this fee, said it probably didn’t passbecause students felt it was unclear where money would be spent orwhat the connection was between retention and cultural enrichment.
“This doesn’t mean these things still can’t come about,” Cooksaid. “We just have to find ways to fund them.”
With more research on campus retention, Cook said supporters couldpush for the fee again in the future.
Also losing at the polls was a fee to provide 1,500 of theuniversity’s lowest-income students with $1,000 per year in grants.The fee, known as “Students Assisting Students,” failed 31 percent to69 percent.
An estimated 39 percent of students graduate with unmanageablelevels of student loan debt, according to a report released thismonth by a state public interest research group. Data from the reportshows that the average student debt upon graduation is $16,928, anamount that has nearly doubled in the past 10 years.
“This is a group that is at risk, and they don’t have any safetynet to fall back on,” Chris Collins, assistant director of financialaid, said. “They’re going to be borrowing more money, their debtlevels are going to go up and they’re going to be in a predicamentwhen they graduate to find a secure, high-paying job to repay thosedebts.”
Collins expressed disappointment in the results, but said heunderstood why students voted the way they did.
“There were six fee increases on one ballot. That’s very difficultfor students to consider,” he said. “They have to rank them in somekind of priority order and you have one that doesn’t necessarilyaffect a large majority of the population.”
The $5 fee to provide scholarships to students studying abroadfailed 31 percent to 69 percent. It would have generated between 350and 650 travel scholarships in the amount of $500 or $1,000 eachyear, starting in the fall.
This is the largest number of students to vote in a feereferendum. During the last referendum in 1998, which proposed an $18fee to build a new pool facility, 3,246 students voted — adifference of 23 votes from last week’s referendum. At that time, thefacility was the only fee on the ballot.
“I would have liked to see more students out there,” AssociatedStudents President Ron Williams said. “More students came out to votefor the mascot — something that doesn’t directly impact studentexperience — and only 10 percent came out to vote for something thatdoes truly impact students.”
Results are not official until ratified by the A.S. Council onWednesday. The outcome of this student referendum will serve asadvice to the Campus Fee Advisory Committee, which meets Friday torender its recommendation to Weber on which fees to implement.
Weber has no timeline to make a decision.
