ASG might not urge tuition freeze

CULLOWHEE — The president-elect of the UNC-system Association of Student Governments said Friday that he might not push for a strict tuition freeze next year — a departure from the unwritten policy the organization has upheld in the past few years.

Zach Wynne, elected this weekend at the ASG’s final meeting of the year, said the way he tackles tuition will depend on what the N.C. General Assembly decides to do on the issue.

The association has passed resolutions during the past several years decrying tuition increases for all system students.

This year, the Board of Governors froze in-state tuition at current levels, but the legislature has yet to take action.

If legislators don’t pass an increase, Wynne said, holding the line on tuition another year might not be practical.

“It’ll take a lot for me to ask for a freeze next year,” he said. “The most we can do is ask very tough questions about where the money is going. We can make sure that any increase is kept to the campus level. And we can ask for a plan.”

Some ASG officials are hesitant to move in the direction of allowing any increases, however minimal.

“We started replacing money that was lost, and we kept replacing money that was lost,” said Victor Landry, outgoing ASG senior vice president. “So with all of the increases we have seen, we haven’t seen any improvement.

“I would never want to see this association take the stance that the students have to take up the slack for the state.”

Outgoing President Amanda Devore said the ASG is not an organization that advocates tuition freezes under all circumstances.

“I think the association has always realized that some tuition increases are reasonable,” she said. “But it’s unreasonable levels of increases and increases year after year after year of a high magnitude that students have a problem with.”

Wynne, a two-term student body president at UNC-Wilmington who will be a graduate student at Appalachian State University this fall, was subjected to extensive questioning by members of the ASG Friday about his policies, something former candidates for the position haven’t had to endure.

He said during his two years on the Board of Trustees at UNC-W, he never supported an increase in tuition.

During the Council of Student Body Presidents meeting on Saturday, Wynne presented his tentative budget for the 2005-06 fiscal year. The total ASG budget amounts to about $170,000.

Devore said the budget allocations should reflect the focus of the association, with more money being spent on state-level lobbying.

“Something that people look to the ASG for is the amount of money we put into legislative affairs,” she said.

Wynne agreed that the primary focus of the group should be state issues. His platform includes a plan to create a database of parents who can be contacted and urged to lobby their own legislators.

He said legislators will be more open to parents’ concerns because they are a much more powerful voting bloc.

And the message they need to send is that cutting higher education is a destructive cycle.

“They need to realize that putting money in the higher education system and education in general creates smart people with skills to get good jobs," Wynne said. “They need to realize we’re an investment.”

 

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