Students at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center are required to pay a number of fees to the main University campus, but law students currently are excluded from the services the fees provide and fee oversight.
The $6 Spring Sports Fee, reorganized last year by Student Government into five separate funds for services on the main campus, is an example.
The fee now pays for a portion of Student Government initiatives, organization programming and the Organizational Relief Fund, as well as disability access and recycling programs.
However, the law campus does not vote for or send representatives to Student Government, cannot form organizations on the main campus and is not able to request support from the Organizational Relief Fund. Law students still continue to pay the fee.
SG officials have made attempts to allow for law school representation in the Student Senate, but with no success. The most recent attempt last fall failed in the Student Senate rules committee.
According to Law School Comptroller William Wilkes, until recently students at the law school were unaware of the problems surrounding the fee reallocation and lack of law representation.
“This has been a mess for a long time,” Wilkes said. “However, paying these fees are simply part of being a good citizen of the LSU campus.”
The administration for the law school and the main campus are separate, and there are two separate student governing bodies for each campus.
Brad Luminais, a third-year law student and vice president of the Student Bar Associa- tion, said to his knowledge no method for fee oversight exists within the SBA.
“I think that it has an adverse effect on [law] students if we are paying a fee that we will never get to use,” Luminais said. “There may be some injustice in that.”
Student leaders on the main campus said a variety of options are available to better include law students.
Jay Buller, a business junior and Student Senate speaker, acknowledges there is a problem in gathering feedback from law students paying fees to the main campus.
“The problem arises when we have so many fees that do not specifically affect the law school, but they are still required to pay,” Buller said. “There is no quick fix.”
Buller said SG focuses predominantly on the main campus’ undergraduate and graduate students, but thinks both law and main campus students should vote on fees proposed for both campuses.
Poultry science senior J.P. Gniady, a former student senator, thinks separating the two campuses was a poor idea from the beginning.
“I think that these problems would be resolved if the two campuses were recombined,” Gniady said.
Buller agrees, adding, “We’re one of the few universities that separate our law school from everything else. It just doesn’t make sense.”
University administrators admit communication on fees should be improved and law students should have the chance to participate in creating new fees.
“Communication is a problem that needs to be fixed,” said Vice Chancellor of Finance and Administration Jerry Baudin. “Everyone should be allowed to vote [on fees] so we do not get into the same situations we have seen in the past.”