Student tuition hike petitioning continues

Student body presidents from throughout the UNC system plan to continue collecting tuition petition signatures to convince the General Assembly to return tuition money to the universities.

Because the number of signatures — about 14,800 so far — still falls short of their goal, the Association of Student Government student body presidents decided Saturday at their meeting in Winston-Salem to continue collecting through February.

 The plan is to get about 22,000 signatures, approximately 10 percent of the student population of the entire UNC system, said Greg Doucette, ASG president.

The 14,800 signatures doesn’t include numbers from many of the schools that couldn’t be at the meeting because of inclement weather, Doucette said.

 “It’s an excellent start, but I obviously want more,” he said. “We still have at least a month to go. I would like to get that number doubled.”

Adverse weather prevented full attendance at this weekend’s ASG meeting and prevented those there from leaving the hotel.

Only nine out of the 17 schools in ASG had representatives at the meeting, the last before the February Board of Governors meeting, when ASG plans to present its petition showing support for the Board of Governors-approved tuition increases and the return of tuition revenue to the campuses.

The board will meet next week to discuss UNC-system President Erskine Bowles’ recommendations for tuition increases, which are based off of the requests from the individual schools.

The Council of Student Body Presidents passed a resolution formalizing its support for campus-initiated tuition increases.

According to the resolution, when the Board of Governors releases its recommendation for tuition increases, ASG will support their plan instead of the increases recommended by the N.C. General Assembly, Doucette said.

The legislature mandated a tuition increase of the lesser of $200 or 8 percent. However, it can choose to replace its plan with the one created by the Board of Governors.

NextBus for P2P gets $1,000

UNC-Chapel Hill received a $1,000 grant for implementing NextBus features on the P2P.

Doing so will enable students to check arrival times for the P2P as well as Chapel Hill Transit buses.

The $1,000 comes from a Campus Innovation Grant. UNC-Chapel Hill was one of three schools that received the grants, which are all a maximum of $1,000, this semester.

In order to be eligible for one of the grants, the school has to agree to match the funding they receive.

The governmental operations and community services committee selected which schools received funding.

UNC Student Body President Jasmin Jones said she hopes this keep students from waiting for long periods outside in the dark for the P2P to arrive.

UNC-CH also applied for funding for bicycles for the SafeWalk program, but the funding was denied because each school is only allowed to receive funding for one project.



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