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Zack Quaintance
Daily Egyptain

Next year, $60,000 from the Revenue Bond Fee, a fee paid by all students, will be transferred to Evergreen Terrace, an apartment complex exclusively available to students with children.

The Board of Trustees approved the transfer last week. The rationale for the transfer mentioned the importance of maintaining Evergreen Terrace's after school programs, family activities and summer camps because the apartment complex needs to promote cultural awareness within its diverse residency body. The residents come from more than 50 countries.

Evergreen Terrace has been financed primarily by the Department of Housing and Urban Development since the late 1960s, but last year the department ruled it could no longer pay for a number of the complex's recreation programs.

The Revenue Bond Fee was originally adapted in the 1970s to pay for debt accrued by housing constructions. Full-time students pay about $60 into the fee, even if they live off campus.

Those costs should be specific to people who participate in the programs or at least live in the complex, said Ed Ford, who just finished a two-year stint as student trustee.

"This question of should all students be paying for some students housing - that's legitimate," Ford said.

The Revenue Bond Fee does not receive input on money usage from a student advisory committee, unlike most other student fees.

Larry Dietz, vice chancellor for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management, said the University has only changed the way the fee is spent four times in the last 30 years, and because of the money's near-total inactivity, he thinks a committee is unnecessary.

"There's been times I've been asked to create an advisory committee, but I've resisted that," Dietz said.

A committee may not be the answer, but just the same representation needs to be given to those who pay the money, Ford said.

"I think the base issue is, look, here's a fee that's being assessed to all students," Ford said. "So shouldn't we have, like all the other fees, some form of semi-formalized process?"

At the very least, a discussion on what the fee is and how it should be used is necessary, Ford said.

Ford may get his wish after the first of the year, when Dietz said he plans to initiate discussion of the issue during his annual presentations to the Graduate and Professional Student Council and the Undergraduate Student Government.

Reporter Zack Quaintance can be reached at zack_quaintance@dailyegyptian.com.