The Student Association executive board recently announced its decision not to accept the tuition waiver voted to them by the SA Senate last year.
The decision comes after negative student response to the news of the tuition waiver, which would have been paid by SA out of money from the Mandatory Student Activity Fee.
An article in the Jan. 29 issue of The Spectrum disclosed that last year's SA Senate approved an increase in the stipend line of the SA budget to provide the e-board - the president, vice president and treasurer of SA - with free tuition.
Although not technically a waiver because the university did not agree to free the executive board from paying tuition, SA President Christian Oliver said because the officers are not actually receiving a check for $1,700 per semester, "It's a waiver in the sense that the SA is paying (the officers') tuition."
According to Oliver, the fact that students were angry about the use of the mandatory activity fee to pay for the officers' tuition - as of Tuesday afternoon, 1685 signatures appeared on an online petition calling for reversal - did not directly affect the executive board's decision to "not accept" the waiver.
"We are not rescinding our tuition waiver because of political pressure from the students," Oliver said. "However, because of the political atmosphere at this point, it looks very unlikely for this to continue into the future, because of the alleged motives of self-interest."
According to Oliver, the three made the decision to rescind the waiver to emphasize that they were not acting in their own self-interest. He said the tuition waiver is an important tool in attracting quality candidates, because the time requirements for which the positions call make it impossible to hold an outside job while in office.
"We still feel that the tuition waivers are the right thing to do for the future," Oliver said. "It's impossible for somebody to take one of these three positions, do the positions effectively and work less than 40 to 50 hours a week. There are a lot of students that, without a tuition waiver and a $9,000 stipend, are just unable to live off of that."
Treasurer Naazli Ahmed agreed with Oliver. "Me, Chris and Jen were never in this for ourselves," she said. "Our intentions have always been to try to take care of the most responsible steps ensuring a great future for the Student Association and the student body at large."
Kerry Cotter, a senior history major, said the matter should be decided through a referendum.
According to Cotter, if the decision to relieve the officers from paying tuition through money generated by the mandatory student fee was made by students, he would vote no, but added, "If the students voted on it, and agreed to (the tuition waiver), then I would respect their decision."
Oliver said the executive board is going to recommend that the tuition waiver be on next year's budget proposal because the SA Senate, rather than the general student body, should be entrusted to approve the measure.
"Obviously, students are interested in it," Oliver said. "However, it's impossible to articulate all the information involved for them to make an educated decision on something as specific as this. A lot of students have no conception of what we do on a daily basis, nor do they really need to know the in and outs of what the president, vice president and treasurer do. They just need to know what events are available to them, what services are available to them, how to get help if they need it."
He said the reason this type of decision is made by elected officials and not through a student referendum is because this is the type of decision senators are elected to make.
"Students ultimately elect these senators to make these decisions," he said. "You just simply can't rule by the masses at a micro level. A student referendum on an issue like this would be micro-managing."
Even though the students voted for the senators, Maria Krieger, a freshman physical therapy major, said it isn't really fair to say the senators really represent the students' opinions on this issue.
"If we didn't know what they were promoting, then we didn't really vote for (the tuition waiver)," Krieger said.
Oliver said students should not be concerned that the mandatory student fee funds the tuition waiver because students are much better off financially when a successful e-board is in office.
Because the executive board fights on students' behalf on issues including fee hikes and tuition increases, Oliver said, "The $.60 that it's going to cost every student to waive the three officers' tuition could, in theory, save them thousands of dollars over the course of their education."
Gerry Ruiz, sophomore political science major, said $.60 is "rather measly," but the student body should still have the opportunity to approve the tuition waiver.
"We had no say in what kind of action (the senate and executive board) took," Ruiz said. "However meager the $.60 is per student, that fee is paying their tuition."
SA Senator Gregory Haynes proposed four constitutional amendments at Tuesday evening's SA Assembly meeting in the hopes of preventing this type of circumstance from occurring again. As of press time Tuesday night, The Spectrum was unable to obtain details of these amendment proposals; a story regarding them will appear in Friday's issue.
