Your money: Student activity fee at work

Each semester, students pay fees to cover things above and beyond basic tuition. One of those is the Student Activities Fee, and for the past two years the fee has cost students $154 per semester. Few students actually realize what this money is used for.The Special Activities Programming budget of the Student Activity Council - financed by the fee - has a budget of $151,428 for the 2009 fiscal year. As of the Oct. reporting period $27,670 have already been spent.


Several salaries are listed in this budget, including student employment salaries, but there is also a record of $2,430.90 spent at Barnes and Noble for SAC books.


According to Student Life Coordinator David Taylor, the executive chair and six committee chairs for SAC each receive a $300 book stipend per semester.


He explained the stipend as necessary because the chair positions are unpaid and it is a way for them to receive compensation for their work.


Taylor also mentioned other perks of SAC and the Student Government Association.


"I believe at least the president of SGA gets tuition paid for and the SAC president gets tuition paid for," he said, explaining these titleholders cannot be employed elsewhere and are compensated through their tuition.


"It's a small thing to do to reward students for their hard work and its only committee chairs, its not like everyone in SAC is receiving this," he said.


The same budget also lists the payment of a hotel room for a comedian brought to campus by SAC.


Taylor noted that lodging is part of the price to bring comedians and some other entertainment to campus, including $192 for the guest housing of a step team, which Taylor thought could have been invited for an NPHC step show.


Taylor said most of the student activity fee is used to provide entertainment and activities to UTM students, he mentioned some activities this year such as the SAC foam party, the 9:09 comedy series and free student movie nights at the Ciné theatre.


"To me this is an institute of higher learning and students who work hard should be able to play hard," Taylor said.


The rest of the money generated by the student activities fee go to support the budgets of The Pacer, PEP, First Year Initiatiave and SGA (approved by the SGA Senate at their last meeting, covered on Page 3 of The Pacer.)

The Pacer's budget is largely used to pay staff salaries and to cover the cost of printing the newspaper, distributed to students weekly for free.


The Pacer operates over its university-appropriated budget because it expects to recuperate approximately one-third ($24,000) of its total operating budget ($72,000) by selling advertisements.


Executive Editor Matt Cook contributed to this report.