About 50 students held a rally at Smith Plaza on Monday asking the administration to think twice before superseding the fee recommendations of the Student Fee Review Board.
Holding signs that read “Student fees are a student right” and “Save our programs,” the group of student government leaders, undergraduates and graduates attempted to justify a $10 increase on students for the 2010-11 academic year to fund several nonprofit organizations and a queer resource center.
“We respect the administration. We understand it’s a difficult budget,” said Lee Drake, a nonvoting member of the Student Fee Review Board at the rally. “We understand some cuts but not total cuts.”
Eliseo “Cheo” Torres, vice president of Student Affairs, sent a recommendation last week to the President’s Office encouraging the president and the Board of Regents not to allocate almost $200,000 in student fees, which would have increased student fees by $10.10 to almost $460.
The Board of Regents will vote on the recommendations at its meeting this Friday.
Torres said he didn’t disagree with the organizations; instead, he was concerned about compounding an increased tuition resulting from legislative cuts with increased student fees.
“My decision was based only on the budget, trying to keep the student fees as low as possible and keep them at the level they were at last year,” he said. “It had nothing to do with the programs. They were excellent programs.”
The organizations fighting to regain funding are the Research Service Learning Program, the Public Interest Research Group and Community Learning and Public Service, in addition to the Queer Resource Center.
Also at the press conference, Katie Richardson-McDaniel, SFRB member, said the administration would be ignoring students and their leaders by ignoring the recommendations.
“We understand the budget pressures,” she said. “At the same time, I think we’ve made a very deliberate, informed, careful decision.”
David Conway, candidate for ASUNM president, said that the power to allocate student fees “should reside in the hands of those who pay them.”
And Laz Cardenas, Conway’s opponent, also expressed his support for the organizations and the Queer Resource Center. He said he’s helping to author emergency legislation for ASUNM’s next meeting to show the undergraduates’ opposition to the cuts.
According to policy 1310 in the University Business Policies and Procedures Manual, the SFRB is tasked only with making recommendations to the UNM president, and all student fee increases or decreases must be approved by the Board of Regents.
After the rally, Conway said he and representatives from the organizations and student governing bodies met with UNM President David Schmidly to discuss the recommendation. He said the administration cited the likelihood of increased tuition to justify not funding the organizations.
“They’re trying to get us to look at the situation as a whole. They’re trying to give a good feel of tuition,” he said. “Cheo … is well within his rights to make recommendations. However, we’re well within our rights — I believe even more — to establish what we feel is a responsible allocation of student fees.”
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Conway said the students need to send a clear message to the administration that the programs are worth the increase.
“Obviously we’re hitting some real hard times, so the message that we continue to say is that these are essential services,” he said. “(Administrators) know that, too. They’re not saying that any program is bad.”
Torres also said he’s looking for other means of funding the organizations on the chopping block.
“If for some reason these recommendations stand, I would look for other ways to fund them, and we’ll find alternative ways because I agree with him that it’s an important program and we should give it some attention,” he said.
However, he said he didn’t have any specific means of alternative funding sources in mind.
