OPINION: Fee Committee Must Protect Student Money From Special Interest Groups

("Money - Savings" by 401(K) - 2012 via Flickr)

It’s springtime which means The Student Fee Advisory Committee (SFAC) will soon meet to decide next year’s budget for the student services. Although I believe The Student Services Fee (SSF) was designed to provide students with programs that directly benefit the student constituency, it is unfortunately rife with interference from on-campus special interest groups whom I believe do not have a right to funds. Student services should enhance the student constituency as a whole rather than the special interest groups who become involved with student money in the name of helping the conceptual individual student. Too many campus interest groups have made use of student money to promote their own mission and this at the expense of service to the student body as a collective entity. This should not be. Therefore, SFAC must preserve student money for the student constituency by prohibiting on-campus special interest groups from receiving money from the SSF budget. In this way, The Committee can help the student constituency preserve student funding for those efforts that enrich the student community's collective experience. 

There are at least two special interest groups who I believe take advantage of SSF money: the administration and other student programs, such as the athletics department and recreational sports. 

With respect to the administration, Title IX compliance (a federal law) is not a student responsibility. Rather, it is an administrative one. However, UT-Tyler's Title IX Office received over $45,000 dollars of student fee money in FY23, deferring money that should have gone to student priorities to go to administrative responsibilities instead. The university should have met this obligation with its own money and foregone student money. 

SFAC must remove administrative responsibilities from The SSF Budget since SSF money does not exist to help the administration meet its federal obligations. Administrative responsibilities are one form of special interests that I believe usurp the student fee's intended purpose which SFAC must end. 

Another source of interference that SFAC must protect against is that from other student service programs, such as both the athletics and recreational sports programs. These programs “double-dip” into student funds to supplement their operations with what their own fee revenue cannot supply.

In my view, The Texas Education Code clearly says that any student program that has its own fee is ineligible for money from SSF. Both programs meet this condition, because both have their own fees apart from SSF. Yet, both programs still received money in FY23 in addition to the revenue from their respective fees.

For instance, athletics received over $224,000 dollars of additional SSF money (on top of the $3.5 million dollars it receives from its separate Intercollegiate Athletics Fee). Likewise, Recreational Sports also received $132,567 dollars of SSF money for intramurals (in addition to the roughly $1.5 million dollars it receives from The Recreation Facility Fee).

SFAC must stop student programs such as athletics and rec sports from dipping into SSF to supplement their program budgets' failures. If their programs cannot operate within their allotted means, then it is time to say so and face the consequences. However, SFAC must preserve SSF money for the constituency’s exclusive use. Its money exists to promote the student constituency as a whole, not to pay extra to whatever student program that may have some benefit to a single individual student.

This erroneous context of thinking in terms of "benefits to an individual student" rather than "benefits to the student constituency as a whole" has led to many special interests taking advantage of much-needed student funds for their own goals. Though all of these entities received money with SFAC’s permission, I believe this activity distorts The Student Services Fee's true purpose and undermines the student body’s ability to promote its own welfare as a result of this.

Therefore, SFAC must rededicate itself to the student body as a constituency and preserve The Student Services Fee for students' shared prosperity. The Committee should focus on services that return a collective benefit—rather than an individual one to each student—and it should abandon programs that serve other constituency groups instead such as those in the athletics program and those in the Rec Sports program, which distorts the fee’s original purpose. In this way, The Committee will promote the student constituency’s wellbeing as a whole and work towards a prosperous and culturally-enriched student community. 

Twitter: @jhescock12

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Feature image: "Money - Savings" by 401(K) - 2012 via Flickr