Some students will pay more than they currently do to fund the ASUO during the 2010–11 school year, while others will pay less than they are, because of changes this year in the way the ASUO administers its budget.
The ASUO, the University’s student government, is funded by the incidental fee, which students pay every term along with the other expenses of attending the University. In recent years, including this school year, the size of that fee for individual students has been tied to the number of credits a student takes. It is $195 for all undergraduates enrolled in 12 or more credits — the majority of students. Students who are taking only one credit, however, pay $140 per term, and the number increases from there with each additional credit.
Starting next year, however, all students will pay the same fee — $192 — regardless of the number of classes they take.
The Emerald previously reported that the $3 reduction in the fee most students will pay is a result of increased enrollment, which means the fee will be distributed among more students. That presented a misleading picture: Expanding enrollment is one of the
reasons it will fall, but not the only one. The elimination of lower fees for students who take more credits was also a key reason.
ASUO President Emma Kallaway and Vice President Getachew Kassa made the decision to do away with the old method for calculating the fee.
“We couldn’t find any reason for it,” Kassa said of the old arrangement.
However, Kallaway and Kassa’s reasoning goes, regardless of the number of classes or credits they take, all students theoretically have the same access to the services the ASUO provides, which by extension the fee finances.
“If everyone has access to that, shouldn’t everyone pay the same fee?” Kallaway said.
Kallaway said the reason she decided to change the way the fee is calculated was the trouble with the ASUO’s budget in the beginning of the year, when the student government
unexpectedly found itself about $400,000 in deficit.
The reason for that deficit was unintended overspending
in the administration of Kallaway’s predecessor, Sam Dotters-Katz. Dotters-Katz used funds the ASUO expected to raise through fees throughout the year to reduce the incidental fee during spring term of 2009.
However, Kallaway said the move backfired, demanding $400,000 the ASUO never turned out to have and forcing her administration to pay it off using its reserves.
“That’s a really inappropriate way to spend money, to spend money that you predict you will have,” she said.
The new system will make it slightly easier to predict how much money the ASUO will have by removing the additional variable presented when the ASUO attempts to estimate how many credits students will take.

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