IU reallocates the money generated from the $78.39 student activity fee to different organizations and groups on campus every two years. IU’s two student government leaders, Rachel Aranyi, president of IU Student Government, and Dakota Coates, president of Graduate and Professional Student Government, will co-chair a committee of students to make these decisions. That committee will then submit their recommendations to the provost.
“Every student pays a set student fee,” Aranyi said. “That is divided between different IU auxiliaries. For example, the IU Auditorium or the bus system, as well as various student organizations. This committee comes together and sees presentations from the different auxiliaries that are requesting funds and then they deliberate about how they should be divided.”
The vice provost for student affairs sent an email earlier this month to students soliciting applications to sit upon that committee. Usually, seven to nine students sit on the Committee for Fee Review. Coates said he hopes to select a committee that represents the university at large.
“The biggest thing for me is having a diversified group of applicants,” he said. “I mean that in a broad sense. We want to have students from different programmatic backgrounds, students from different classes, as well as racial and national origin backgrounds. I think that’s important.”
Coates said that’s important because of how students on campus use resources.
“Our students utilize their resources in different fashions on campus,” he said. “I think making sure we have involved students as well as students we typically don’t get to hear from in student advocacy channels. We want to make sure we pull from all sorts of communities.”
Aranyi and Coates don’t necessarily get to determine where funding goes, but are there to facilitate deliberations.
“The two co-chairs don’t actually have any say,” Aranyi said. “We are ex-officio. We just oversee and manage the committee but we don’t actually have any input on what the committee decides.”
Student applications to sit on the Committee for Fee Review are due Dec. 22.
In addition to soliciting applications from students, campus organizations are allowed to request funding from the Committee for Fee Review. Those proposals are due Dec. 15.
