The Undergraduate Student Government held a meeting Tuesday night to discuss implementing a $125 per semester facilities fee, which students would begin paying in 2012.
The facilities fee would pay to build or expand health and recreation centers on all four campuses, and the estimated total for these projects is $38 million.
The fee would allow recreation centers to be built on the West and Polytechnic campuses and would expand the YMCA on the Downtown campus.
It would also allow for renovation and expansion of the Student Recreation Complex in Tempe.
New and renovated buildings would open in fall 2012, and the fee would only apply to students at ASU from that year forward.
At the meeting on the Tempe campus, USG senators asked questions and voiced their concerns about how the facility fee would affect the Tempe campus. Student government president and political science junior Brendan O’Kelly said he was hesitant to support another fee.
“I’m not sure why we’re trying to implement a facilities fee when we already have a health services fee and a recreation fee,” he said. “I think it’s ridiculous.”
W. P. Carey School of Business senator and economics junior Athena Salman also opposed the fee.
“ASU already has a large population of students who have to pick up another job because of the current economic situation,” Salman said. “I can see why students at West and Polytechnic would think this was great, but I’m representing Tempe students. If people can’t afford to come here because of another added fee, who is this going to benefit?”
Students from the Tempe campus were also present, such as Sport Club Association president and anthropology junior Bryant Flick, who said he was in favor of the facilities fee.
“Right now we have a lot of clubs who are going off campus because they can’t find the space on campus to practice,” he said.
Chris Gast, the Residence Hall Association director and political science senior, illustrated the lack of space at the Student Recreation Complex by using two name plaques to section off a small square of a table.
“The national average for space at a student recreation center is seven square feet [per student]. ASU students have two-and-a-half square feet,” Gast said. “We might never see this building as students, but future students will need it. We are busting at the seams and we need to think about future generations of ASU students.”
O’Kelly said that as a student, he did not see a reason to expand the recreational facilities.
“Personally, after seeing tuition go up and furloughs across the board, I’d rather see us expanding on academic programs than building a new gym,” O’Kelly said.
O’Kelly is supposed to have a meeting on Friday with the student government presidents from the other three campuses as well as the deans from each campus.
“I’m going to say we have serious reservations about this fee,” O’Kelly said. “Right now there has been very little communication from administration about what exactly this would pay for. I don’t want to sign on to anything that is going to cost money that we don’t know exactly what we are paying for.”
Reach the reporter at sheydt@asu.edu.
