Fee proposals roadblocked at UL System board

Fee proposals roadblocked at UL System board

By David Ryan Palmer

Associate Editor

Something is rotten in the State of Louisiana and the University of Louisiana system board’s decision to delay a vote on fees the Student Senate sent to the board late last fall.

This from Student Government Association (SGA) President Davante Lewis and Speaker of the Senate Alex Reinhaur. 

“I am deeply frustrated, disappointed, and troubled by this,” Lewis said.

According to Lewis, each fee proposal approved by the Student Senate in December of 2013 was pulled from the UL Board’s schedule for the February 27 meeting.

“I honestly can’t say what the objection is, what the concern is, who who is objecting.  The information that I’ve been given not only as an SGA president who oversees this process but also a UL Board member has been very little,” Lewis said.

The fees were pulled because one fee, the Student Engagement Fee, was deemed ‘political’ in nature.

What ‘political’ means, however, is hazy and ill defined?  Reinhaur and Lewis tell the Contraband that it essentially means that the Student Engagement Fee is an example of pork barrel spending, of attaching a number of desperate fees together into a more appealing package.

“I don’t understand their definition of ‘political.’  As a board member, the other fees – and if ours by any means are being called political – than the other school’s proposals bleed politics,” Lewis said.

“It raises a serious question for me: What truly is the objection?  I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

Reinhaur said that the Student Senate has taken great pains to have as transparent a fee proposal process as possible.

“I emailed Dr. Woodly today [Feb. 20], and assuaged concerns about our about our process, assuring her that we have the most meticulous and transparent a fee process ever conducted at this school, and probably the state for that matter,” Reinhaur said.

“You can ask any senator who was there about how long it took, and about how we had to extend meeting times.  We made it mandatory that the resolutions be tabled for at least two weeks, to ensure proper deliberation.  We went to great measures, more than any other university, to make sure these fees were deliberated properly on the senate floor.”

Neither Reinhaur nor Lewis could give a definitive answer about how this will affect McNeese’s spring 2014 elections.