Terri Canino, UCA’s vice president of finance and administration, and Robin Williamson, UCA’s vice president of student affairs, attended the SGA meeting on March 31 to propose a 3.96% increase on tuition and fees.
The 3.96% change would be a total dollar change of $208.50 on the undergraduate annual rate and a total dollar change of $195.12 on the graduate annual rate.
“The actual fees that will be increasing will be undergraduate, and that’s $12; graduate’s gonna go up $14.01,” Canino said. “Those two are going to be supporting the faculty and staff.”
Canino said that the athletic fee is going to be increased by 50 cents and that it would go to supporting game travel and athletic scholarships, but mainly game travel.
“The biggest thing that you’re going to really notice is, instead of having access and security, we’ve been having a $27 semester fee, and now it’s going to be a $5 per credit hour fee, and we’re doing that because of the deeper maintenance,” Canino said. “So all the excess revenue is going to go for roads, parking lots and sidewalks.”
The early online program is also going to go up 3.96%. The transcript date is going from $5 to $10 an hour, strictly due to technology, and all the faculty and staff will be receiving 2% additional revenue.
Senator Hannah-Grace Fritz, SGA’s senior class president and chair of the accessibility committee, moved that SGA allocate $498.64 to fund a wheelchair-accessible rubber ramp for the Bear Essentials food pantry entrance, and the motion passed with 37 senators voting yes and 1 senator, Senator Siera Love, voting no.
The estimated cost for a pure concrete ramp was $10,335, as stated in a previous SGA meeting by Wendy Holbrook, assistant vice president for Student Affairs at UCA.
“This is the kind of cheaper alternative for the ramp that they need at the Bear Essentials food pantry,” Fritz said. “There’s really no way for any wheelchair, anything of that sort, to get up that curb, up that sidewalk, into the building. So it is a very important problem that the pantry does have, it’s a very important solution right here, and a very, very much cheaper option than the originally proposed $10,000.”
Senator Lyric Williams, SGA’s junior class president and chair of the diversity committee, moved senate resolution 006 to resolve that SGA recognizes the month of April as National Minority Health Month and encourages initiatives that promote health equality and awareness for minority communities, and the motion was passed unanimously.
Senate bill 002, named The Demerits in Unprofessional Conduct, was moved by SGA Executive Vice President Kylie McGraw and was passed unanimously. The reason for the amendment is “to clarify that unprofessional conduct can result in the interest of a demerit or demerits.”