ASUO President Laura Hinman presented a new EMU referendum Wednesday night announcing that the new student fee will be not higher than $69.
“This is the language, it is going forward tomorrow, I just want you to know,” Hinman said to the body after reading the bill draft. She is planning on presenting the bill to Constitutional Court tomorrow, with hopes of getting ballot approval.
The bill establishes that fundraising will be used to lower the cost of the student fee which has been lowered most recently from $79. By lowering the cost of the fee, the EMU task force hopes to make the project more appealing to students. The fee  is not likely to reduce further in fear that students will lose a voice in the project.
“If we got any lower and administration — or someone — was paying too much, it was no longer our fee and no longer our project,” Hinman said. “It was a really hard place, we want to make the fees as low as possible and still keep the project we’ve worked really hard on.”
Hinman stressed the importance of the student voice and asked senators to get involved as well to encourage students to support the project.
“Because we set the fee before the president had the opportunity to, we’re going to need a lot more students to help push this through the OUS (Oregon University System),” Hinman said.
A recent development of the EMU design is to drop the concert hall. The decision to cut the concert hall comes from concerns voiced by donors.
Sen. Ian Needham was quick to add that a concert hall could easily be added later.
“It’s something that has been allocated space for,” Needham said.
Hinman added the executive team would not provide information that promoted a “yes” vote.
“While I personally support this, all of the language comes from facts,” Hinman said.