The fate of the Student Mandatory Activity Fee for undergraduates will be on the voting block this week, with the Student Association (SA) proposing a $15 increase in the fee. If the vote passes, the fee will increase from $79.75 to $94.75 per semester for each student.
Voting will take place from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in the Student Union. The vote is open to all undergraduates with valid UB identification.
The Mandatory Activity Fee currently covers SA costs including clubs and activities, SA operation costs and entertainment including Fall Fest, Spring Fest and new events like the Backyard Bash. According to John Martin, treasurer of SA, inflation has caused an unprecedented 36 budget appeals from SA clubs.
"It wasn't adding up for anybody and we didn't have the money to give them," Martin said.
SA has gauged how prices have gone up based on the Consumer Price Index, which rose 18.77 percent since the last time the fee was increased four years ago. If the increase doesn't pass, SA will have to make major cuts in their current and future expenditures.
"The Student Association would be really handicapped if it didn't pass," Martin said. "If this didn't pass, we'd be looking at cutting something major, which I'm not looking forward to doing."
According to Martin, one of those major cuts could be Spring Fest 2009. Clubs would also continue to struggle to stay within budget, he said.
Corinna Joseph, a sophomore aerospace engineering major, believes that students who are less involved in clubs and activities on campus have much less incentive to vote for the increase.
"I would not vote for the increase even if I was involved in clubs," Joseph said. "I am just not that interested."
Rob Tanghe, a sophomore electrical engineering major, said he doesn't plan to vote because he doesn't feel the fee has an impact on his involvement in the UB community.
"If I was going to [vote], I would vote to keep it the same and not increase it," Tanghe said. "Since [I am] not involved in a lot of activities, an increase wouldn't benefit me that much."
Some students like Atcha Kopwitthaya, a graduate student studying physics, believe that the fee will benefit UB students and allow SA to continue providing services students enjoy.
Kopwitthaya said she would vote for the fee increase if she were still an undergraduate student.
"I think it's good to some point," Kopwitthaya said. "I think that many activities will be a benefit to students, so it makes sense to increase that fee."
For the fee increase to pass, state law mandates that 10 percent of the undergraduate population must participate in the vote, according to Martin.
The last fee increase was last voted on in the fall of 2004 and implemented in the spring of 2005, with a $10 increase added to the then-$69.75 fee. During the last proposed increase four years ago, approximately 2,000 students voted, barely making the 10 percent cut.
Martin said that one of the biggest club expenditures is gas, the cost of which has increased by 245 percent in the four years since the fee was last increased. The fee increase will not lead to SA increasing the services and activities they currently provide, but rather, maintaining the same level of services.
"We're not trying to get more money. We're just trying to provide the same amount of services," Martin said. "We can't do the same amount with what we have as we could four years ago."
Martin said that because SA is planning on the fee increase passing, there have been no cancellations as of yet. In the event that the fee doesn't pass, SA will be forced to make drastic budget cuts and adjustments.
"We'd put a stop on basically all of our accounts," Martin said. "We'd pretty much have to pack up our boxes. There would be quite a few hundreds of thousands of dollars we wouldn't have ... we'd have to shut something down major."
According to Martin, even though the fee is voted on every two years, SA only tries to increase the fee every four years. This year's increase will prevent a fee jump of $50 to $60 during the next vote on the fee in the fall of 2010.
"We try to at least let a class pass through before we raise [the fee] again," Martin said.
Students like Joseph doubt that the fee will have a long-term impact on bringing necessary services, events and activities to UB.
"I don't think the increase would really make as much of a difference as I'd want it to," he said.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
