A bill recommending raising the ASUNM student fee from $20 to $25, which passed the ASUNM Senate in early March, won’t be voted on by students in this election.
The bill would have gone before a vote of students as a constitutional amendment during the election today, but it was vetoed by ASUNM President Jaymie Roybal late last month.
Roybal said she opposed an increase in fees for students who already face financial hardships to attend school.
“I did not believe raising the ASUNM fee was in the best interest of the student body as a whole,” she said.
The bill would have increased funding availability for student groups on campus. The last time the ASUNM fee was raised was in 2002, from $14 to $20. The number of student organizations has been on the rise in recent years, increasing the demand for student fee funding. This year, 147 student groups requested $745,711 in funding for next year. Last year, organizations requested only $719,798 for this year. ASUNM was only able to allocate about $580,000 for both years.
There was not enough time for the Senate to reconsider the bill to override Roybal’s veto in time to place it on the ballot for today’s election. The original bill passed 16-1-1, and a two-thirds majority would have been required in a second vote to override the veto, according to the ASUNM Law Book.
ASUNM Sen. Tyler Crawley, who sponsored the original bill, said he will work to develop a different bill dealing with student fees, rather than resubmitting the bill in the fall.
“I want to look at how we can redevelop our funding source so that it grows or decreases with the needs of students and ASUNM,” he said. “It can’t be that we have to wait 10 years to increase our funding with a constitutional amendment. We are working on developing a more comprehensive approach to funding student organizations.”
