Campus Council members unanimously passed a resolution Thursday night expressing support for Duke Student Government's pilot off-campus bus route.
The Council also recommended that Residence Life and Housing Services, Student Affairs and Campus Services fund the continuation of the pilot program in the future.
Members listened to a presentation on the cost of living at Duke during the group's general body meeting.
Eddie Hull, dean of residence life and executive director of housing services, spoke to members about the breakdown of the RLHS budget.
He noted, however, that Duke-as a private university-has a policy not to share any specifics of expenditures.
Hull said that because RLHS is an auxiliary service, it does not receive any financial support from outside sources. Academic year rental revenues constitute more than 90 percent of RLHS revenue, the remaining revenue coming from summer school and program rental fees.
"How much we make in the summer feeds directly into the academic year rent," Hull said.
Budgets are determined based on the previous fiscal year, Hull said. He added that he just proposed next year's budget to the Board of Trustees and cannot comment on next year's rental fees until the budget is approved.
The RLHS budget is broken down into more than 700 sub-categories-grouped into five sections-that must be examined separately, Hull said. After price adjustments are made, an inflation factor is multiplied to all costs.
For the next fiscal year, approximately 17 percent of the categories' costs remained the same, 37 percent is scheduled to increase more than the inflation rate and 46 percent has been identified to decrease in cost, Hull said.
"Either we didn't need as much money as we thought or we identified somewhere else to spend the money," he said regarding decreases in category budget proposal.
Facilities and Services Chair Hasnain Zaidi, a junior, asked what Campus Council can do to help lower rents.
"It's not likely to see an absolute decrease in rent," Hull said. "It is likely to decrease the amount of increase."
He added that students can help lower RLHS expenditures-which translates to rental fees-by decreasing utility consumption and property damage.
"It's something to think about and for us to work on in the next few weeks," said Campus Council President Jay Ganatra, a senior. "[Hull explained] why we pay what we pay for rent."
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