Tuesday, April 16, 2013
The Penn State Student Activity Fee Board, its members and composition
At Penn State each campus has a student activity fee(SAF). These are funds that every individual student pays into for campus events and activities. Currently at Mont Alto the fee is around 82-85 dollars. Each year Mont Alto's student activity fee normally stands around 180,000$.
There is a University Student Activity Fee Board that legislates policy, rules and regulation on how the money can be spent across the campuses. Currently some rules that were created and enforce by the board include the prohibition of paying for wages and salaries. The SAF can also not be used to pay for programs that all students do not have the oppurtunity to particapate in.
This board is compromised of 13 members. These include: The Vice President of Student Affairs, The Director of Union Student Activities, The Director of Student Services, A Director of Student affairs, a University Faculty senate member, Four Commonwealth campus students including the President, two University Park students including the President, The Student Government President of the Graduate schools and the chair of the University Park allocation committe.
8 students and 5 administrators=13 members.
7 votes are needed to pass a motion. The composition of this board is debated and semi controversal. University Park has 45,000 students but only 2 votes on the board. All of the commonwealth campuses I,e. Mont Alto, Altoona etc.. Have 35,000 students and 4 votes. Some argue that the strength in the board is not proportional. Others argue that, student money should not be spent by faculty members and that no administrators should be on the board.
What are your thoughts? And furthermore, do you feel as if commonwealth campus students have to much power on the board? Should adminstrators be on the board?
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My thoughts on this that I don't think the commonwealth campuses have too much power on the board because it all comes down to the students with this university. And I think administrators should be on the board because they need to understand what is going on too just as much as the students do.
ReplyDeleteI think it is a good idea to have administrators on the board because they are the ones who run this university and they should know what goes on in it. The students do need a say too however because they are the ones paying to go here, so their presence is essential. I don’t think the commonwealth campuses have too much power because a main campus (University Park) majority would be unfair to the commonwealth campuses. A UP majority could mean that programs at UP would have more funding than commonwealth campus ones or more programs at UP than at the commonwealth campuses. This would not be fair to the commonwealth campuses because they would have less programs (and less funding for the ones they do get) than UP, thus creating a gap between UP and the commonwealth campuses in regards to campus sponsored activities.
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