SGA hears comprehensive fee report

Author: Adam Dede

The Student Government Association (SGA) met on March 2 to discuss safety and the comprehensive fee. The two-part meeting included a presentation from Student Comprehensive Fee Committee Chair AnnMarie Wesolowski '08, which was followed by a conversation with Director of Public Safety and Associate Dean of the College Lisa Boudah.

Wesolowski delivered the same presentation to the SGA as the one she gave to the Board Trustees on Feb. 15. Wesolowski hopes that with the SGA presentation and the display her committee has erected in the New Library, more students will become aware of the comprehensive fee and the many things that go into its calculation.

"Part of our committee this year was doing an education quota," said Wesolowski. "Typically, we don't present this information."

Wesolowski informed the SGA of the 4.93 percent increase to the comprehensive fee that her committee recommended to the trustees and explained that while many would like to see no increase at all in the fee, granting such a request is simply not possible. Wesolowski also noted that although Middlebury has one of the highest costs of attendance of any school in the country, the comprehensive fee is now growing at a comparatively slow rate.

Due to past attempts to keep fees down, many schools comparable to Middlebury are now being forced to increase their cost of attendance by as much as nine percent annually.

Some SGA senators still felt, though, that it should be possible to cut more costs from the College budget.

"Did you find any areas that are getting a lot of money for nothing as opposed to other areas that are struggling, like Dining Services?" asked Ross Senator Derek Sakamoto '10. "Because waste like that tends to happen in a bureaucracy."

Wesolowski responded that there really are no obvious areas from which to make cuts.

After Wesolowski's proposal, the SGA heard from Lisa Boudah, who talked about plans to add more blue lights to campus and took general questions from the SGA.

Boudah noted that the current plan is to begin adding more blue lights to campus this summer. In order to keep costs down, the new blue lights will appear on buildings rather than on stand-alone posts, which Boudah pointed out is not only a cost advantage, but is also safer.

"The ones on the residence halls are better," said Boudah. "That's a place of safety. It's occupied. There are people who live there. As opposed to drawing people to some pole in the middle of a field somewhere, and then you have two options - do you run or do you wait?"

The SGA also asked Boudah if it is possible to open more study spaces on campus later into the night.

"The main places that are open right now sometimes get crowded and noisy because there aren't many of them," said Junior Senator Bobby Joe Smith '09.

Boudah said that extending the hours in many of the card-key accessed areas should not be a problem.

"It sounds like there are a lot of buildings that students need to be in later at night or would like to be in later at night," said Boudah.