Students opening their bursar's bills for Fall 2007 will be greeted by an increased and rechristened student activities fee, Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs, confirmed Monday.
With the increase, the total fee-to be renamed the "student services fee"-will total approximately $225. The money will go to the Office of Student Activities and Facilities to be used "exclusively for student services," Moneta said.
He said the student activities fee was created to reduce one-time event costs paid to the University-such as room-rental and security-thereby easing and cheapening the process for student-group event planning.
"We don't do the programming. All we want to do is make sure students don't get nickeled and dimed," Moneta said. "I just want to make sure the expenses are put into entertainment and not recycled into the University."
Though he said he could not provide a line-item budget, he said some of the funds will go toward making OSAF employees available for nighttime events.
Of last year's increase-which totalled about $900,000-about two-thirds was allocated to OSAF, The Chronicle reported in December. It also helped pay for new computer stations-a project co-funded by Duke Student Government-and new furniture.
OSAF Director Chris Roby referred questions about how next year's increase will be spent to Moneta.
"I've heard that this is for a specific set of programs that OSAF wants to do," said DSG President Elliott Wolf, a junior. "My understanding is that this is for furniture, for programming and for a few other things."
Moneta added that the recent student activities fee hikes have been accompanied by freezes on the percentage of tuition revenues Student Affairs requests. Other fees were also frozen, including the student health fee, which Moneta said did not increase to match inflation this year.
Wolf said he tends to oppose fee increases on principle. He also called on Moneta to release his budget.
"I think it would be a positive development to release the Student Affairs budget to verify [Moneta's assertions about fee freezes]," Wolf said.
He added that he believes the University should make an institutional decision to spend from its endowment at a greater rate to decrease pressure on students' wallets.
"Our prerogative has always been to keep fees lower," Wolf said. "The student activities fee has been more than doubled by Student Affairs recently.... If [administrators] value a particular program, they have money to spend on it. It's not necessary to pass fees along to students."
Student Affairs prepares a budget annually that is approved by the provost and the Board of Trustees.
The increase was approved at the Board's February meeting.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.