LSU Student Government has formed a new committee to evaluate the ever-growing student fee bills that University students are required to pay each year.
On Feb. 7, the student senate passed a resolution to form the Student Fee Value Assessment Committee, which vows to ensure student fees are effectively used by the University and work toward removing or decreasing the fees that are inflated or unnecessary.
Coastal environmental science and political science sophomore Jack Green who will be co-chairing the committee with student senator Jose Munoz Ruiz, who said he is excited for the new committee to begin advocating for lower student fee bills.
“I think this is important given the context of where we are right now as a state and higher education, and the situation that students are facing,” Green said. “You see stories and press releases every day about how first-year retention in the state of Louisiana for public schools is so low, and it’s because of high fees and high tuition with low state funding.”
The committee will be composed of five members from the student senate and five members of the SG executive branch who will vote on decisions regarding which fees to look into and what recommendations to make based on their findings.
SG president Jason Badeaux, vice president Leah Sanders, speaker of the student senate James Mickler, speaker pro tempore David Hunt and chief of staff Heather Sullivan will act as non-voting members to assist in the committee’s proceedings.
According to Badeaux, there are many required fees that every University student is forced to pay each year that have not been reviewed in 30 to 40 years.
“I think it’s one of SG’s main responsibilities to ensure that student fees are being spent wisely and appropriately,” Badeaux said. “One thing we’ve never done is review the student fees that we do have at the University. It’s time to go back and see [if] these fees [are] still a solid return of investment for our students, or have they run their course at the University and is it time to get rid of them.”
While the committee does not have the power to directly change any of the aspects of the student fee bill, its recommendations will be submitted to the LSU board of supervisors, executive administration and LSU President F. King Alexander.
Green is already working on finding out more about where students’ money is going each semester.
“We’re looking for [fees] that may not have total transparency as to where all of [the money is] going,” Green said. “Or to some, that maybe if we do have a number that we see is going in a certain direction or is going in a certain way, we are wondering more specifically about how that [money] is being used.”
The first aspects of the student fee bill that the committee will be looking into and possibly cutting are for student media, campus life, and the performing arts, Mickler said. He pointed out that since 1990, student required fees have increased by over 600 percent, and said he hopes that this is one way SG can help counteract that trend.
“Student fees have been going up since 1965,” Mickler said. “Rarely are they ever decreased or removed. We found two times, and those were just absorbed by other fees. One of the problems is that there [was] no review process.”
The committee’s meetings are weekly and open to the public. The resolution only establishes the committee temporarily for this semester, but a future resolution can be passed to keep it for long-term.