University of Wyoming’s Board of Trustees recently rejected a proposal for new student fees. The plan would have called for an increase of current mandatory student fees and a plan for new programmatic fees.
“Over spring break we found out the university was proposing a whole new fee called the ‘Student Success Fee’ into the mandatory student fee,” Tyler Wolfgang, vice president of ASUW, said.
Currently students already pay about $667.31 in mandatory student fees for the university. These fees are directed towards programs such as ASUW, UW counseling, music and theatre, recycling, student media and seven other student organizations.
“The student success fee was proposed at $53 and that included UW art museums, student advising, STEP, writing centers, and the STEM building,” Wolfgang said.
Members of ASUW found one inclusion in the proposal to be out of place.
“Basically the committee was really upset with the STEM building being on there because we didn’t think it fit with all the other categories and we didn’t think it was right to make it a mandatory student fee to all students,” Wolfgang said. The committee also agreed that it was a big price tag, making up about half of the $53 fee increase.
Wolfgang also said that the committee was upset about the time they were given with the plan saying they were not given long enough for such a big decision. After consideration, the Board of Trustees put decision on both the programmatic and mandatory fees on hold.. This will allow ASUW and the rest of the committee to work on coming up with a better plan for students.
“This is the biggest change in terms of tuition and fees that the trustees have faced in a long time,” Rob Godby, UW director of Economics and Finance, said.
The ASUW committee has developed a new plan that does not include the STEM building in the mandatory student fees. This will reduce the cost to students of the new “Student Success Fee” from $53 to $28.
“We [ASUW committee] heard another proposal for the Student Success Fee for that $28 and we approved it, wrote legislation that was turned in on Thursday and will have its first reading tomorrow,” Wolfgang said.
The committee will debate the alternative plan next week but has until the 2018 school year to work and vote on it.
The new Student Success Fee will still be set at $28 dollars for every student. However, some of the other mandatory fees will also be dropping in cost. The recycling fee will be dropping by $0.58 and the student Union fee will be dropping by $21, according to ASUW resolution #25.
These reduction in other fees mean that the actual increase of mandatory student fees will only be $6.42 for each student, only a 0.96 percent increase compared to a 4 percent increase when the STEM building was included in the plan.
