The Student Fee Review Committee met Friday to put forward their fee increase recommendations. The committee consists of representatives from Student Government, the Graduate Student Association, an at-large student, and faculty and staff from various departments on campus.

The committee, which meets either annually or bi-annually, depending on guidance from UNC General Administration, is charged with reviewing and making recommendation for the upcoming academic year and presenting them to Chancellor Woodson and the Board of Trustees by mid-November.

Student Senate President Mitchell Moravec, a fifth-year studying psychology and paper and materials science, served as co-chair on the Fee Review Committee. Moravec explained the general purpose behind the committee, which meets in the fall to hear and consider requests from different entities on campus.

“These units on campus make fee increase requests,” Moravec said. “There’s a state statute that’s basically fees can’t increase more than 3 percent every year, so we stay under that kind of limit, but everything from Student Legal Services to student centers, programing, how we repair and renovate buildings — all that great stuff, they put in those recommendations to increase fees every year and it goes to the budget office, it’s actually kind of a very long process, like 10 months to a year…”

As for the fee increase recommendations that stood out this year, Moravec highlighted the funding of the new Military and Veteran Resource Center, as well as smaller increases that are aimed toward general maintenance and sustaining the current level of services provided on campus.

“A lot of requests were maintenance in nature,” Moravec said. “We always talk about how there’s inflation every year, and you kind of have to account for that in more money, so a lot of those were around that… All fees are important, but the Student Center Operations DASA fee is going to support the new Student Veteran and Military Resource Center. They kind of created that center and now it’s going to be supported by student fees, so that was approved and that will be going through and now more or less permanently supported by kind of fees as opposed to one-time funding.”

Nick Faulkner, a fourth-year graduate student studying agriculture and life sciences, sits on the Graduate Students Fee Committee. Faulkner proxied in multiple fee committees in SG and on a larger scale. He spoke about the fee increase requests that the GSA stood behind.

“What the graduate students said and what happened were not always the same,” Faulkner said. “Probably, the one that grad students were most for would be the increase to OIED, which is $1.25 toward a new director for the Asian American and Pacific Island Programs. There’s a huge Asian American and Pacific Islander population within the grad student body, and so we’re totally for that portion of the increase.”

With mental health playing an increasingly important role in student life, Student Health put forward a request for an increase in funding that was supported by both the Senate and the GSA.

“This year’s fee wasn’t necessarily for the health side, but more for the counseling side,” Moravec said. “We annually see an increase in demand for counseling services, so an increase in the fees allows us to hire more counselors, hire more psychiatrists and support the need for mental health services on campus.”

Some of the requests for increases made were ultimately denied by the committee for budgetary and precedence purposes. Moravec clarified the logic behind those decisions.

“You can see a message in some of the fee increase denials,” Moravec said. “For example, the UAB, the Union Activities Board, and Student Government both asked for a fee increase this year to address those maintenance inflationary purposes, but we ultimately denied both of those increases as Senate and also as the Fee Review Committee, ultimately say that can we look at what we’re spending right now, what the priorities are and can we find the funds to address the increases in costs and maybe reduce funding or kind of reduce priorities in other area.”

The GSA supported increasing fees for counseling and mental health services, however they expressed some reservations regarding the amount of the increase and suggested a compromise.

“The grad students are all for the increase in counseling,” Faulkner said. “Especially on Centennial, because there’s been an increase in demand as the stigma of mental health has kind of gone away, so everybody wants that, but $15 was asking for a lot, much more than needed, from the grad student’s perspective, so the grad students had suggested 10.”

Eventually, the final fee committee approved the full amount of a $15 increase to go to Student Health.

According to Faulkner, the total student fee increase requests this year amounted to $50.37. Representatives of graduate students body supported an increase of $28, while representatives of the undergraduate students body backed $38, and the university level committee approved a $43 increased.

“Seniors graduating this year, when you add in all of their tuition and fees over the time that they’ve been in here, will pay $1,600 more than seniors who graduated last year, which is insane,” Faulkner said.

As for improving the process of looking over fee requests and voting on them, Faulkner hopes for students to be able to be involved in the process from an earlier stage.

“The biggest problem with the process right now is that it’s basically blindsiding the students,” Faulkner said. “The students aren’t involved until the very last step. All the budgets are made and they’ve basically said vote for it or not at the very beginning of the year. You have to vote at the beginning of the year to get all the steps for the next year, so the students are being blindsided.”

Moravec encouraged students to reach out to Student Government with their questions on how their student fees are spent in the university and Senate’s involvement in making these decisions.

The full list of fee recommendation increases and the corresponding votes is attached to this article.

Editor’s note: Nick Faulkner is currently a staff photographer with Student Media.