Student fees are increasing by $10 but not to fund a new student section in The Pit.
The Athletics Department requested an increase in the amount of money it gets from student fees to fund student-athlete scholarships.
Rudy Davalos, UNM athletic director, said the increase in funding was necessary to support the 21 sports programs and more than 500 student athletes at the University.
"There are numerous sports, and most of them don't generate any funding," he said. Davalos said football and basketball are the most profitable sports at UNM.
He said the Athletics Department receives money from state grants, ticket sales, private donations, the Lobo Club, advertising, corporate sponsorships and radio and TV contracts. Despite the excellent job it has done of getting funded through those sources, Davalos said it isn't enough for all the scholarships.
"The cost of business keeps going up and up," he said. "That's where the student fees come in."
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Curt Porter, director of the Budget Office, said the Athletics Department receives $790,000 - $38.16 per full-time undergraduate student - from student fees.
ASUNM President Kevin Stevenson said students pay about $670 in student fees per year, and from that amount, $340 is a student activity fee, which includes the fee for athletics and 22 other departments.
He said new $10 fee will go directly into a scholarship fund for student athletes.
"The Student Fee Review Board recommended a $10 increase this year to provide more scholarship money for athletics," Stevenson said.
However, Porter said none of the money that goes into the Athletic Department from student fees is exclusively for scholarships.
"That's additional money for them, and they can choose to use it that way," he said. "There's no one revenue source that's dedicated to one thing."
Stevenson said the fee increase had nothing to do with the acquisition of the new student section in The Pit.
But Porter suspects there was a connection.
"I wasn't directly involved, but I believe the rationale is, if athletics is going to get more money, then students need to get more from that," Porter said.
Stevenson said he and Davalos talked and wanted to help each other.
"But we didn't buy that student section by raising the student fee level," Stevenson said.
Talk of student fees being raised by $200 for a new student section at The Pit were not true, Stevenson said.
"I don't even know where that came from," he said. "How we arrived to that $200 figure would be if we took the student section in 1992 and got it back."
The student section prior to 1992 consisted of the floor seats of sections 19, 20 and 21, Stevenson said.
"That dollar figure would be just to make up money the Athletics Department would be losing by getting rid of those seats," he said. "That was just me punching numbers."
Student fees were not raised to fund the student section, Stevenson said.
Porter said the Athletics Department wanted the increase in student fees to keep up with its peers in the Mountain West Conference.
He said other universities receive an average of $1.7 million to $1.8 million from student fees.
Davalos said the University of Utah gets more than $3 million from student fees and Colorado State University gets nearly as much.
"We are one of the lowest," Davalos said.
Porter said the Athletics Department has constraints on its budget that keep it from getting to that level.
"They are wanting to do more things, and they feel their revenue source is not as large as it could be," he said.
