Herbert, trustees favor continuing $30 charge

Despite a recommendation from the student-run Committee for Fee Review not to renew last year's $30 athletics fee, IU President Adam Herbert and most of the IU board of trustees are willing to sign-off on the fee for at least another year.\nThe fee took center stage Wednesday during a statewide forum in the Indiana Memorial Union intended to examine tuition proposals for the next school year. During the proposal, the administration announced its inclination to support the fee, despite the CFR decision.\nThe CFR decision not to renew the fee was appealed through Dean of Students Richard McKaig and IUB Interim Chancellor Ken Gros Louis, who sustained the committee's recommendation. Gros Louis then forwarded the CFR recommendation to Herbert.\nHerbert received that recommendation, along with a conflicting recommendation from the University Athletics Committee, which supports the renewal of the fee. After weighing the suggestions, Herbert currently is inclined to support renewing the fee, said Judy Palmer, IU vice president and chief financial officer.\nIf approved, the fee -- charged to all Bloomington campus students -- will provide more than $1 million to the athletics department to help fund the 22 non-revenue IU sports and dig the department out of its fiscal deficit.\nFinal proposals will be made at the trustees' May 6 meeting, but many trustees seemed ready to re-approve the fee.\nTrustee Sue Talbot said it's necessary to "reframe our thinking on the athletics fee." Instead of thinking of the fee as something to bring fiscal responsibility, she said, students should consider the enhancements the campus receives because of sports. \n"We haven't gone to a Final Four in a while, but we will. And we haven't gone to a bowl game again, but we will. All of these things are part of what makes this campus so special," Talbot said. "If sports are only one particle of our institution, then a $30 fee per semester is a very minor thing to ask."\nTrustee Stephen Ferguson's endorsement for the fee was not without reservation. He said though he's opposed to the fee in principle, he'll support it again while waiting for Athletics Director Rick Greenspan to turn the program around.\n"You've got a deficit in the athletics department, and as a Big Ten institution, we need to have an athletics program that we're proud of," Ferguson said. "I hear the students' point, but as a trustee, I've got a responsibility too that I have to step up to."\nTrustee Jeffrey Cohen said he favors the fee if the athletics department can prove the fee's revenue will aid the indebted department.\n"I'm uncomfortable supporting the athletics fee against the students' wishes without a more formal plan from the administration that outlines exactly what our strategy is to increase revenues or reduce expenses," Cohen said. "I want to see something to show things are being done to create revenue. If part of it is going against the students' wishes, I'm all for it if that's going to do it."\nThe only dissenter on the fee was trustee Patrick Shoulders. \n"Let me say this: last year I made my feelings known," said Shoulders. "I believe that vote was eight to one, and I was the lone wolf."\nShoulders said his position regarding the fee was not a slight against sports, but a defense of the review committee.\n"Across the board they don't think it's fair," Shoulders said. "I don't see any reason to have that process if we're not going to allow it and engage it and listen to it."\nOutgoing IU Student Association President Tyson Chastain expressed concern about using fees to balance budgets.\n"Fees are not for deficits and not for improving the atmosphere," Chastain said.\nFive IU campuses -- all but IU-East and IU-Kokomo -- have an athletics fee of some sort. But Chastain the Bloomington campus is the only campus with a student review committee. He also echoed the continued student defense of rejecting the fee: once it's there, it's hard to erase.\n"No one in this world wants to give up revenue," he said.\n-- Contact Senior Writer Tony Sams at ajsams@indiana.edu.