Straight outta comp fee

During each basketball game last semester, nearly 23,000 UB students on average chose not to attend. But all of those students paid for them.

Not at the doors with a ticket. No, those are free, but they certainly paid for it elsewhere, in the university's comprehensive fee.

Each semester, all undergraduates pay the comprehensive fee, which goes up every year and now stands at $779.25 for full-time students. Like the spirit-friendly features at Bulls games, the services your comp fee pays for, whether you use them or not, are bumping up your tuition and eating up well-earned scholarship and financial aid money.

Aside from athletics, which constitutes 19 percent of the fee, the big spenders are technology, transportation and health.

Of technology's 41 percent of your fee, a total of $278 goes towards iConnect@UB, the main Internet system on campus. If you've ever been dissatisfied with your connection to the campus network or your computer's "general wellness," you might not be getting your money's worth.

As for your printing services, there's a new requirement this year that you pay for any number of pages printed past your limit. Some portion of your $278, then, goes towards what? The handling fee?

Transportation, which constitutes 17 percent of your fee, is split almost evenly down the middle between "transportation services" and parking.

No complaints here, then, unless you're a freshman who this year isn't allowed to park in a lot of spots near the academic spine. Similarly, for those of us that can't ever find a parking spot or aren't happy with slow and sporadic bus schedules, there must be something we're missing.

It's good to know, in that case, that part of your transportation fee goes towards the routine University Police patrols that are responsible for your parking tickets.

Why is it we pay for services we don't use? Whether it's buses, printouts, intramurals or residence hall damage fees, nearly all of us pitch in for something we didn't do, don't participate in, or didn't ask for.

Granted, health services' 13 percent pays for professional counseling services which many needful students never take advantage of and a multitude of features like STD testing that we receive for free.

And it's worth noting that the technology fee also pays for 631 public computer workstations, high-speed Internet, and a nearly free software CD that you'd have to buy for over $100 someplace else.

Even transportation pulls its weight with disability services, the blue light system, and a shuttle system that gets non-mobile students from one campus to another three miles away.

But in an age when students complain statewide about past and future tuition hikes, it's worth considering that in the universities where their comprehensive fee was made voluntary rather than mandatory, athletics and the other services made out just fine. A Division-I school might not be able to afford an option as radical as that, but maybe making certain parts of the comp fee voluntary would be a good alternative.

You can request a fee waiver if you just don't want to pay. That is, providing you don't take classes on campus, don't have an active UB account and don't have a current parking permit (basically, if you're not a student). In fall of last year, 58 students pulled this off and kept their 800 bucks all for themselves.

If you're looking for more information, check out the comp fee's Web site, but don't get your hopes up. You're going to read that the fee "improves general wellness" and other things as vague as "hosts programs annually." And if you look hard enough, you'll find that your "college fee" pays for the frats and marching band.

A bang for your buck? Only if you play the clarinet.