Opinion: Respect student voices in fee decisions

This year, we have seen a flurry of important fee proposals come before the set of fee committees that meet every other year at UNC. Composed of administrators and students appointed by student government, these committees hold the power to decide what student-wide fees are approved.

The process begins with an all-student committee and ends at the Board of Governors. This year, the all-student committee, Student Fee Audit Committee (SFAC), has reviewed proposals for a nursing fee, a student organizations fee, a biomedical engineering fee and a business school fee.

The fees process is long and arduous — it’s easy to get lost in the bureaucracy. As the process continues, the decision-making power shifts to people higher up in the university system.

It is important to take a step back and consider the importance of one crucial element of the fees process: student feedback.

Thanks to adamant student support in past decades, student-originated fees face an all-student referendum. In fact, students will be able to vote on one or two of these student-originated fee proposals this year.

It's worth noting that the fees suggested by administrators do not undergo the same measures. They simply face committee decisions; that is why student feedback is a cornerstone in each committee’s evaluation.

Crucially, the student committee's decisions are advisory, not binding. They should be recognized by the administrators as the process continues, but the administrators are not bound to them.

The extent to which student feedback plays a role varies extremely. Some of the fee proposals presented this year were backed by relatively little student feedback — the Kenan-Flagler Business School interviewed only nine students before submitting their proposal to SFAC.

But when asked why he chose to pursue a fee rather than a tuition hike, the business school’s dean, Doug Shackelford, told SFAC that he was instructed “by higher-ups” to propose a fee.

This situation presents a problem for students' ability to influence policy. Yes, it is true that the student fees committee makes many of its decisions on the basis of substantive student feedback. For instance, it recently approved a pricey biomedical engineering fee which was presented with detailed polls of what students actually thought.

On the other hand, its advisory decisions might not be respected by later committees. What happens when there are proposals that were suggested “by higher-ups” that are about to be passed on to the administrator-heavy committees? What happens when these may be the same “higher-ups” who suggested the fee to begin with?

The University faces undeniable financial pressures, and our state funding shows no signs of increasing. We understand that, to many administrators, fees are an obvious choice.

But while the business school and biomedical engineering fee may not be prohibitively expensive for many business school and engineering students, what about the fees that lie ahead? Will there be a day when each major has a different price tag? If we move beyond fees, do we turn to corporate sponsorship? Will there be a day when the exercise and sport science major is sponsored by Gatorade?

These questions are difficult. But we must recognize that, as administrators face increasing financial pressure on all sides, students will become even more crucial in the process.

We should turn to the history books on student fees and tuition measures at the University; we must recognize that these institutions were put in place to guard against the temptation to push more and more financial burden into the less guarded outlet of student fees.

We applaud the students on the SFAC committee for their wholehearted devotion to understanding the fees and what’s at stake. For instance, one member interviewed over 200 students about the business school fee in preparation for the meeting.

Being fully engaged in the present is how we look out for and show our love for future Tar Heels. We hope that students voices are respected as this process moves forward and that our campus can engage in substantive debate on these complex issues that affect so many students.