If the referendum passes, all students will pay $16.50 per semester toward the student activity fee. Undergraduates now pay $11.50, and graduate students are charged $9.50 per semester.
Congress approved the resolution, the first of the 84th session, by a vote of 20-2. If the student body passes the referendum, the fee increase will have to be approved by the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees and the UNC-system Board of Governors before it could take effect for the 2003-04 school year.
Ethics Committee Chairman Dan Herman said Congress has struggled to adequately fund the needs of the many student groups that receive money from student government. He said the activity fee increase would help alleviate some of those budget constraints.
Speaker Tony Larson, who introduced the legislation, said the increase is appropriate to compensate for inflation. He said that despite minor increases and decreases, the fee rates today are the same as when they were set in 1984.
Herman supported the increase, saying UNC-CH's student fees are far less than the fees paid by students at comparable universities. "We're not even close to the same ballpark as peer institutions," he said.
In March, the 83rd Congress passed a resolution to put the same fee increase on the ballot during a special election that was to take place April 2. But because of miscommunication between then-Student Body President Justin Young and former Board of Elections Chairwoman Emily Margolis, the special election was postponed three weeks.
Although debate about the resolution was minimal at Tuesday's meeting, some discussion centered on the likelihood that students will approve the referendum.
Rules and Judiciary Committee Chairman Blair Sweeney noted that wording on the ballot was altered by the Finance Committee to make the referendum more appealing to student voters.
The committee changed the wording from "raising the Student Activity Fee to $16.50 per semester" to "changing the Student Activity Fee to $16.50 per semester."
