Council Forum — October 29, 2009

Tuition submission

Councillors received a follow-up to last meeting’s tuition presentation from Provost and Vice President (Academic) Carl Amrhein, delivered by SU President Kory Mathewson. Mathewson had received the proposition from administration just before council convened.

Additional revenues to the University, decreased expenditures, and administrative efficiencies will all go towards maintaining current operations, and new program spending in light of budgeting deficiencies is unlikely, according to Mathewson.

Two methods have been proposed to balance the deficit: increasing instructional costs in select faculties, and increasing user fees. A combination of those increases and the 1.5 per cent increase that will occur next year under regulated ties to consumer price index will yield tuition increases of varying degrees across what are defined by the provincial government as "professional faculties."

Aggregation of fees introduced will amount to general fee increases of the following amongst professional faculties: 66 per cent for Pharmacy, 39 per cent for Business, 35 per cent for Engineering, 35 per cent for Medicine, 32 per cent for Law, 21 percent for Dentistry, and three per cent for Economics, Design students in the Faculty of Arts, and Nutrition and Food Sciences in Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences.

The change will affect 6,692 undergraduate students, and will be grandfathered in at different rates depending upon faculty. Administration is expecting to yield $4.3 million from the tuition increases in the 2010/11 school year and ramp up the yield to $14.2 million by 2013/14.

Mathewson also encouraged students to be vocal in the face of such increases, adding that until finalization at the Board of Governors in March, all propositions relating to solving the University's budget deficiencies are up for debate.

I’d have a good party ...
— Kory Mathewson, Students’ Union President, on the possibility of funding his birthday with a DFU

Going into overtime

Council chambers filled with contentious debate on the topic of Bill 10, a bill seeking to modify the administration of Dedicated Fee Units to student organizations on campus. Dedicated Fee Units are collected along with tuition payments in the fall by the SU.

Bill 10 was defeated after over two hours of debate and a tied vote. The Bill sought to give council the power to reject the a referendum question prior to its appearance on a campus-wide ballot requesting the implementation of a DFU in any case where students didn't receive direct benefit.

Board of Governors representative Steven Dollansky, who brought the bill forward, heralded it as a move in the direction of fiscal responsibility. The restriction, he stated, would allow Council to eliminate referendum questions that, while however pertinent to the student population, may lay outside the domain of Council.

Currently, students are able to have a question put to referendum in a March election by obtaining a petition in its favour signed by 15 per cent of the student population. If it had passed, Bill 10 would allow council to reject the referendum question despite fulfilling that quota.

The vote was brought to a tie in its 11th hour by SU President Kory Mathewson, who retracted a previous abstention to vote against the bill.

Question period

SU President Kory Mathewson was asked about the reasoning behind Council's decision on October 7 to fulfill a sponsorship request from the U of A's International Centre. The request consisted of a discount on rental space and catering. The question was brought to attention by Arts Councillor Jon Mastel, who pointed out that the SU didn't usually provide deals to the IC.

Mathewson countered that the IC, while it didn't usually receive donations help from the SU, provided services that benefited a portion of the student population and was worthy of the same level of support provided to other student groups on campus.

Vice President (External) Beverly Eastham fielded questions about her upcoming attendance at a Toronto conference hosted by the Millenium Scholarship Foundation, a private organization created by Parliament to provide awards to students for the span of a decade.

Launched in 1998, the program funding has been discontinued by the federal government, and, Eastham explained, this final conference would offer insight into the direction Canada's endowment system will be taking as it fills the void left by the MSF.