The Student Services Fee

As I mentioned last night, the president’s most important role is to speak on behalf of UNI students to the Board of Regents and Iowa General Assembly. On campus, the most important role is to chair the Student Services Fee Committee. The Student Services Fee Committee is the committee that makes recommendations to President Allen for the allocations of the $213 student services fee (SSF) that every student pays in addition to tuition. This is the money that funds Homecoming, CAB, Athletics, the GBPAC, the Northern Iowan, NISG, and much more. Without the SSF, students would be required to pay for athletic event tickets and CAB events, would never have the opportunity to use NISG funds to bring speakers in, and Homecoming events would be nonexistent. Needless to say, the SSF is vitally important, and every student attending the university has benefited from what it funds at one time or another.

The SSF committee is chaired by the student body president. The rest of the committee is made up of five faculty members, three NISG at-large appointees, and the chair of NISG's Organization and Finance Committee. Together, they review applications for each line item of the SSF and make recommendations to President Allen. As chair of the committee, the student body president’s role is absolutely vital. Former Student Body President Joel Anderson used his position to rework the entire application process. In the coming weeks we’ll be finding out what President Walrath does with the committee, too.

Currently, the SSF Committee is sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars of unspent money. It’s an issue that needs to be addressed in the coming months, and which possibly will be dealt with by one of our three candidates for president. Students, your vote in the upcoming election should be influenced by who you trust the most to make the SSF reach the most students as possible.

Some key questions to ask candidates about this include:

• What are you going to recommend for the excess contingency fund dilemma?
• When Athletics asks for more money, are you going to approve it? If you do approve it, what will you recommend to fund less of?
• What will you do to protect funding for things like The Northern Iowan?
• Taking a stance in a room where all of the “adults/faculty” disagree with you is really tough. How will you handle it?

Even if you already know who you’re voting for, send an email/facebook message to all the candidates with these questions. Press them for answers. On campus, this is the most important thing that the student body president does. Make sure you know what your candidate is willing to do/say to best represent the student body.