University of Virginia Library

Where The Money Goes

Several of the candidates for Student
Council in yesterday's Graduate Arts and
Sciences election were among the latest in a
long line of students to raise the question of
the comprehensive fee, its uses and its
necessity. About all most students know
about the fee is that it totals $122, and they
pay it at the beginning of every year. They
don't know who gets what chunks of the pie,
what it is used for, and what exactly each
student gets out of it.

The biggest slice goes to Student Health
Service; the fee last year was $30 and it may
go higher. This pays for the oft-maligned little
office next to the Hospital and the doctors
and nurses who staff it and treat the ills of the
student body.

Fifteen dollars goes to the Field House and
Gymnasium fee which was pledged for the
amortization of the bond issue which built
University Hall. Most students probably think
that the building dropped out of the sky or
was provided by Alumni donations and state
money, but that evidently isn't the case. The
Athletic Department also picks up $20 from
each student in addition to the aforementioned
$15 for its playpen. The $20 pays
your way free into all home athletic contests
at what amounts to a reduced rate for those
who avail themselves of the privilege. Those
that don't care to see the Cavaliers in action
are stuck, unless they participate in IM's,
which also are supported by the fee.

A total of $21 is assessed for the Alderman
Library and for Newcomb Hall, with $7 going
to the Library and $14 going to the Student
Activities building. Another $4 goes to class
affiliation, which we assume helps pay the
expenses of graduating a class. That and the
$7 Student Activities Fee are the only funds
that students have anything to say about. The
Student Activities Fee pays for a part, but
only a part, of the expenses of most of the
activities around the Grounds - club sports,
publications, and special interest groups.

Another big slice, $25, goes to something
called the Faculty TIAA, which is a
retirement fund for faculty members. It is one
of the reasons that the University pays higher
faculty benefit than VPI, for example. The
state sets limits on faculty salaries but it does
not restrict the ways in which the University
independently supplements them.

Some of the figures do not seem
particularly significant until it is realized that
9,600 people are paying them. Then the $25
for the faculty becomes $240,000 per year.
The Athletic fee becomes a fund of $192,000,
with another $144,000 thrown in to pay for
University Hall. Students are paying $135,000
for Newcomb Hall and the University Union,
as well as almost $290,000 for the Student
Health Service. This is a lot of money, and yet
in the majority of instances the students have
no say in whether they want the benefits
being paid for and have no audit to see
exactly where the money is going.

We think that Student Council ought to
have more control over a lot of this money. In
addition, it seems to us that faculty and
administration members of the community
are in this sense parasitically. They get this
newspaper every morning, among other
benefits, just like any student. Yet they
pay nothing, all the while controlling the
committee which has final say in the
disposition of student activities money. At the
same time, they reap the benefits of student
contributions to the retirement fund which
are simply thrown in by students with no say
whatsoever in how they are used.

It may well be a good idea for students to
pay for a faculty retirement fund and a
student health service and the other things
they now support. But we think it would be
an equally good thing, as well as a just thing,
if those who paid had some control over the
administration of their money.