Western tuition graphic. Soleil de Zwart // AS Review
By Kiaya Wilson
Western’s Board of Trustees held an emergency meeting on Tuesday, April 7 to discuss a reduction of student fees for the spring 2020 quarter. The Board of Trustees unanimously approved a reduction of 28.6% or $171 from the initial fee total of $599.94. Students will be refunded $171 if they paid their tuition and fees before this meeting, otherwise they will be charged the new rate.
The emergency meeting took place after over 5,000 students expressed their desire for a reduction in tuition and fees for the spring 2020 quarter amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Multiple students created online petitions. One petition, created by Julia Ventura, has nearly 5,000 signatures from other students asking Western to reduce tuition because classes changed to an online format and most buildings on the main campus closed due to COVID-19.
The Associated Students Finance Council and AS Executive Board held numerous emergency meetings in the weeks leading up to the Board of Trustees meeting. The AS Finance Council met on Friday, April 3 to decide on a recommended reduction to the AS portion of the services and activities fee.
AS Business Director Nate Jo led the meeting and discussed the potential for recommendations of 50%, 70%, 85% and 100% reductions in fees.
Jo started the meeting by thanking everyone who helped work to put the calculations together, including Raquel Vigil, finance and business manager, Adah Barenburg, AS student senate pro tempore, and Linda Beckman, division director of budget administration. Beckman then began explaining the work that was done for this meeting.
“I’ve been working closely with [Associate Dean for Student Engagement and Director of the Viking Union] Eric [Alexander] the last couple weeks on the topic of the student mandatory fees and trying to work with your advisors from the various different constituent groups,” Beckman said.
Beckman explained some of the uses for the services and activities fee cannot be reduced because part of the money is used to help pay off bond covenants for building construction and the rest is used for continued building operation.
“We can look at our reserves and other sources of funds to try to keep making those bond payments, there are what we call covenants required with those bonds to keep a certain level of income coming in to keep the systems healthy and strong,” Beckman said.
Vigil added that the work Jo and the AS board have been doing has been pretty extensive and in a very short time.
”[The finance council] hear that this is going to be presented on Monday that doesn’t give the student senate or the AS board time to make a decision and it doesn’t even give this group a chance to present this out to the general student body,” Vigil said.
Beckman agreed that this has been very extensive work, but they want to get the decision made as early in the quarter as possible.
After discussing all options, the finance council unanimously approved an 85% or $69 fee reduction. The 15% or $12 fee collection will go towards employee salaries, building bonds and general support for the AS offices.
The AS board further discussed this decision on Monday, April 6 for further approval and endorsement.
Jo started the meeting with background on the topic.
“As we all know, we’re facing a global pandemic, which means that less people are in school and even less people will be in school come fall and that means a lot of hard conversations,” Jo said. “So, I’m really thankful for all the meetings and groups and people that have been able to come together over the last week to make some really amazing strides forward in how we can continue our operations and lessen burdens on students at the same time.”
Jo then went over the reduction the AS finance council approved including the amount of money that would be collected and the amount of money that would need to be taken out of reserves to sustain the quarter.
AS board members VP for Diversity Yesugen Battsengel and VP for Sustainability Trevor Mullins expressed concern to Jo over student employment on campus.
“All of these options maintain all AS employees working their standard hours, with the exception of a few that budget authorities had noted of people who had voluntarily said that they either were going to work reduced hours or didn’t want to work at all during spring quarter,” Jo said.
Lani Defiesta, AS president, also brought up a point by Leti Romo, program advisor, that was in a chat not visible in the livestream regarding student employment.
“Leti is saying that there’s a university committee that focuses on student employment. And the committee’s sole purpose is to figure out other options of employment for students,” Defiesta said.
VP for Student Services Emily Gerhardt said she has been working with administration about resident advisor layoffs.
All AS board members and Barenburg thanked Jo and other members of the finance council for their work and consideration of students’ financial situations during this time.
“I think the difference between $81 and $12 to a student is very significant in terms of these really hard financial times,” Barenburg said. “I also appreciate the care that y’all took when considering maybe what the next few quarters will look like and making sure that we have still a little bit of cushion because we’re facing a lot of unexpected things right now.”
After the AS board discussed the options, how the reduction may affect students, the board unanimously voted to endorse the finance council’s decision.
Vice President of Enrollment and Student Services Melynda Huskey said, during the board of trustees meeting on April 7, the work the AS has put in before the board of trustees meeting was very helpful for their approval.
“A lot of different elements go into the service and activities fee and I want to particularly call attention here to the fact that the majority of the reduction is owed to the decisive action taken by the Associated Students who spent a lot of time really working through what they could do to reduce the burden to students,” Huskey said. “So, what’s left is really just those areas where we continue to provide a service or other reasons we need to maintain the bond payments.”
President Sabah Randhawa sent students an email after the Board of Trustees meeting on April 7, explaining the approved fee reductions for the spring 2020 quarter.
The AS executive board held a virtual town hall meeting on Wednesday, April 8 for students to ask questions and express their concerns. Most of the questions and comments were about student employment and how students could get the university to lower tuition.
The AS board said they are committed to keeping students employed and they encourage student employees to visit Western’s human resources page or the student employment website if their questions were not answered during the townhall meeting.
Grace Drechsel, VP for governmental affairs, said she has been working with the Washington Student Association to advocate for students through legislation.
“We put out a list of, kind of, demands to get in contact with the governor, the lieutenant governor and then relevant legislators in higher education, this was right when school got cancelled,” Drechsel said. “Just with some basics, like demanding pass/fail classes, a moratorium on things like rent and utility payments, creating and expanding emergency grant accounts.”
Drechsel said she will continue working with the Washington Student Association and state senators during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For any other questions or concerns, visit the AS Board of Directors website where you can find contact information for all AS board members.