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ASU student fees may go up

• Students at Albany State University are invited to weigh in on increases to their mandatory semester fees.

Barbara Rivera Holmes

ALBANY — Albany State University officials are asking students to bear a $100-per semester increase to their campus fees in order to pay off the stadium debt and construct a new student center.

Larry Wakefield, vice president for fiscal affairs at ASU, said students pay $301 per semester in mandatory fees that include activities, $51; athletics, $160; health, $47; and technology, $43.

In December 2007, he said, the administration submitted for approval a fee increase of $5 — $3 for health and $2 for technology — to the University System of Georgia’s Board of Regents.

The administration now asks students for another $100, bringing the total to $406 per student, per semester. The breakdown isn’t set in stone, Wakefield said Monday, but likely would be $35 toward the stadium debt and $65 toward the student center.

Wakefield said the school could eventually generate about $20 million from the $100-per-semester increase. After financial fees and interest, he said, the fees would yield $14 million for the student center and $2.3 million toward the stadium, whose debt is held by the ASU Foundation, which owns the facility.

The proposal was shot down last Tuesday by a committee of three students and three faculty/staff members.

Jazzmin Randall, president of the ASU Student Government Association, said two students voted against the proposal and the remainder abstained.

Randall said she abstained because she didn’t have enough time to review the proposal before the vote nor get input from the student body.

“I was told that it (the vote) was going to move on whether we had the chance to talk to the students or not,” she said. That same day, ASU President Everette J. Freeman traveled to Atlanta “for a discussion (with the Board of Regents) about the student activities fees,” Wakefield said.

Wakefield couldn’t say Monday afternoon if Freeman succeeded in discussing the matter and if so, what the outcome was, but John Millsaps at the Board of Regents said Freeman wasn’t on the agenda for a Board of Regents’ meeting last Tuesday or Wednesday.

SGA and Freeman will bring the issue to students at 8 tonight during a town hall-like meeting at HPER Gymnasium.

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