Student Health considers longer hours at cost of higher fees

Student Health and Counseling might extend its hours of operation to accommodate students with later classes and tighter schedules.

SHAC surveyed students last month and found that 34 percent said they wanted the center to stay open longer.

Beverly Kloeppel, director of SHAC, said students might favor extending the center's hours but that they will have to pay more for the service.

"The SHAC is funded by user fees, like when someone walks in, and then we get some funding from the Student Fee Review Board," Kloeppel said. "The question arose about how much it should cost students. Unfortunately, the amount of money that we receive fluctuates with the amount of students we have enrolled at UNM."

Kloeppel said SHAC has conducted these surveys for the past few years to prepare to request money from the Student Fee Review Board. They will approach the Board this month.

"The question now is whether or not students would want their student fees to rise or whether the students would want to pay more per visit," she said.

Senior Abdullah Feroze, who is in his first year on the Student Fee Review Board, said the SFRB will ask students for more input before making a decision.

"There are going to be several town-hall meetings held starting in January," Feroze said. "We are really trying to accommodate every student, even those with tough schedules, so that the students can tell us what they want their money to go to."

Feroze said the SFRB will consider the needs of all students.

"The SFRB, which is a joint committee of both undergraduate students on ASUNM and graduate students on GPSA, (makes) recommendations to the University president regarding the amount of allocations," he said. "Naturally, we want to look at the ones that benefit students the most and offer our help to them."

According to the student survey, 50.3 percent of students would pay an increase of $15 in student fees per year in order to extend the center's hours, and 49.7 percent would rather pay the increase of $10 for each visit.

Senior Tim Serrano said SHAC should be open for longer hours.

"The SHAC helps a lot of students, and I think it is important that it be as convenient as possible," he said.

Serrano said SHAC should receive more money from student fees because most students go there at least once.

"I think that if they were to raise the individual pay for each visit, especially to something like $30 per visit, it would make me want to go somewhere else," he said. "If they raise the price for everyone, it seems like it would be helping the majority of students."

Kloeppel said that more than half of students on the UNM campus visit SHAC at least once a year.

"The Student Fee Review Board is still going to decide whether or not they can give us the funding," Kloeppel said. "It is going to be easier to show them where the students are coming from, thanks to these surveys. I really respect them for wanting to know that, too."

Feroze said it will be difficult to substantially increase funding for SHAC without diverting funds from elsewhere or increasing student fees past what most would want.

However, he said, the funding will be granted if a majority of students or President David Schmidly decided that SHAC should get it.