The Duke Student Government Senate approved a measure to increase the $222 annual student activities fee by a total of $100 over the course of the next two years at its first meeting of the academic year Wednesday night.
By voting for a $25 hike, the Senate also approved funding for all three new initiatives under consideration by DSG: low-cost legal counseling, a car-rental service and a bus tracking system.
Undergraduates will vote on the activities fee increase in a referendum Sept. 15. The referendum will propose to increase the current per-semester fee of $111 by $25-to $136 per semester-for the 2009-2010 academic year and another $25-to $161 per semester-for the following year.
Three different fee increases were proposed Wednesday night-a $10, $15 or $25 incremental hike per semester. All three increases would go toward increasing funding for student groups, but they would be combined differently with the three DSG-led projects.
Thirteen members, the majority, voted for a hike of $25 per semester-or $50 per year-which was the increase posited in the initial proposal by DSG executive board members, and would include funding of student groups in addition to the three projects. Five members voted for an increase of $15 per semester-or $30 per year-which would include funding for only one project, and one representative voted for the hike of $10 per semester-or $20 per year-which would not include funding for any of the three initiatives.
Following this vote on the amount of the proposed hike, representatives voted on a measure calling for the student body referendum to allow students to rank the three DSG projects in order of their preferences. All members but one approved the motion.
The per-semester student activities fee increased by about 7.8 percent for the 2008-2009 academic year, from $103 each semester last year to the current $111 semester fee. Approximately 44 percent of the current fee is allocated to DSG, and the student government's portion of the fee has not been upped in seven years, said DSG President Jordan Giordano, a senior.
Giordano said the Senate's campaign to convince the student body to approve the additional fee will begin immediately.
"We have a pretty big campaign set out starting [Thursday]," Giordano said. "We will be launching a Web site. We are going to be tabling. We are going to e-mail every president of every organization on campus."
Giordano also mentioned the importance of educating freshmen about the potential increase in student fees as they are the students who will be voting in the largest numbers.
If the student body does not approve the referendum, DSG will once again have to extract money from their surplus fund, which contains $60,000, Giordano said. In the past, DSG has been withdrawing $20,000 to $40,000 from the fund annually.
Giordano said he felt that having a full-time lawyer and legal secretary on campus is a particularly important initiative.
"We feel that it is a service students want and need," he said.
DSG also hopes to bring Zipcar, a car rental program active on 35 college campuses, to Duke undergraduates. Through this service, students over the age of 18 would be able to rent cars at $5 an hour or $55 a day.
"There will be cars positioned in a few lots around campus," Student Affairs Senator Clarke Hitch, a sophomore, said. "The rates are a lot cheaper than if you rented from a traditional car rental place."
DSG plans to start with 10 Zipcars on campus. Senators said this would be an environmentally friendly choice, adding that introducing Zipcars would remove 20 cars from campus each day.
Finally, a bus tracking system accessible by cell phones and computers would keep students up to date on the locations of various buses on campus.
The Senate also voted on including a survey on the ballot in which students would be able to rank the importance of student legal services, Zipcars and a bus tracking system.
Vice President of Academic Affairs Chelsea Goldstein, a junior, said this was an important addition to the referendum.
"If everyone is going to pay an additional fee, their voices should count," she said.
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