A California state senator is pushing for legislation that would require California State University campuses to receive approval from students for campus-based mandatory fees.
The bill — authored by State Senator Michael Rubio, D-Bakersfield — advanced last week through the Senate Education Committee and would require campus-based fees to pass through a vote of the student body or a fee advisory committee made up of mostly students.
Campus-based fees fund students’ photo ID cards, facility fees and health services, among other items. In contrast, tuition is set and reviewed by the CSU Board of Trustees.
The CSU administration opposes the bill because it would change the current system of shared governance between elected associated students and administrators, according to CSU spokesperson Erik Fallis. Fallis said elections could be time-consuming and cost $25,000 on average.
“For most campus-based fees we do elections, but there are times where adjustments may be smaller, and it would take time to go through an election,” Fallis said. “And if the issue needs urgency, then an election would not be efficient.”
The bill responds to incidents where CSU presidents have redirected or established campus-based fees without student representation, according to a fact sheet from Rubio’s office. The most recent case occurred in February 2011, when the president of CSU Long Beach established a “Student Excellence” fee with the permission of only the chancellor.
Protocol states that the CSU chancellor’s approval is necessary for bills to pass after the respective campus completes its approval process either through an advisory committee or consultation with student leadership, according to Fallis.
The California State Student Association Board of Directors, consisting of 23 student representatives from each CSU campus, has collectively chosen to take a neutral stance on the bill, rather than choosing to support or oppose the legislation, according to association Executive Director Miles Nevin.
After discussing the bill, the board came to this conclusion because they felt that student leadership on CSU campuses currently has opportunities to discuss fee issues with administrators, Nevin said.
“Even if there is no vote, there is an alternative process in which the president obtains stakeholder opinions. The president does have to go through some type of consultation process,” Nevin said.
Rubio hopes that the bill will allow students to take part in how their own money is allocated throughout campuses, which he recognizes as a difficult task.
“College students are already having a difficult time making ends meet to pay for rising tuition and living costs,” he said in a Wednesday press release. “Clearly, if students vote a student fee into existence, they should always be part of determining how funds are used.”
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Shorter Chris Edley (Boalt Dean):
The students at Boalt are so smart that they don’t even need the legal education that the faculty at Boalt is unqualified to provide anyway. Despite this, public law schools, like Boalt, ought to be as expensive to attend as top-tier private institutions. The actual value of the coursework at Boalt is/could/should be derived from imparting critical thinking skills. Lawyers are good managers b/c they know nothing about anything! Boalt should take on as many international students as possible (half of each incoming class?) so that America’s tradition of ‘the rule of law’ is imparted to the rest of the world.
No foolies!
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/04/future-shock#more-31018
http://www.californialawreview.org/assets/pdfs/100-2/01-Edley.pdf
Rule of law…
like when banks made huge numbers of liars loans,
side-stepped the 300 year old county level property transfer title system and cheated counties out of the fees,
set up their own recording system, MERS, but failed to record transfers,
securitzied the loans but improperly transferred the notes to trust making the securities worthless from day 1,
made false reps and warranties by buying fake AAA ratings for the securities,
saw the house of cards come crashing down, but got bailed out unconditionally by the tax-payer,
fabricated documents en mass scale on foreclosures b/c they couldn’t establish title for lack of records,
got caught violating consent orders for loan servicing abuses,
got POTUS, OCC, SEC and DoJ to run out the statute of limitations on most of those felonies,
and signed a settlement for pennies on the dollar, with wide release from future prosecution and toothless oversight going forward.
Or maybe he is referring to the retro-active immunity granted to the telecom industry after being outed for warrantless wire-tapping, each instance a felony under FISA.
Rule of Law? He’s Delusional.
Gotta love the ‘critical thinking’ defense of law school, doesn’t he realize that this defense failed to protect liberal arts education from the budget cutters? Einstein said insanity was doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.
“The California State Student Association Board of Directors, consisting of 23 student representatives from each CSU campus, has collectively chosen to take a neutral stance on the bill, rather than choosing to support or oppose the legislation, according to association Executive Director Miles Nevin.”
Again, student leadership is co-opted by the administration and fails the student population at large.