53% of student body rejects the SGA proposal

Students at the University of Louisiana at Monroe rejected the proposed referendum and voted against changing the current fee structure Thursday.

Over 1,800 students participat­ed in the two-part vote, with 53 percent voting “no’ and 47 percent voting “yes.”

The failing of the bill upset Brooke Dugas, a senior biology major from Franklinton.

Dugas is currently the Student Government Association Treasur­er and was elected by affirmation as 2011-2012 SGA president Thurs­day.

“I strongly believe that the pass­ing of the referendum was exact­ly what ULM needed at this time; therefore, I was disappointed to hear that the referendum failed.

The Student Government Asso­ciation (SGA) was responsible for presenting this referendum to stu­dents, which if passed, would have risen student fees $130 more a semester.

Before the SGA present­ed the ballot to the student body, the ULM administration and the Univer­sity of Louisi­ana system had both approved the proposal.

“Countless hours were spent by SGA officers, our advisor and the administration preparing a refer­endum that we felt would benefit our university and the students,” Dugas said.

The SGA had the referendum broken into three divisions, ath­letics, Visual and Performing Arts and campus beautification.

Students would have had to pay $10 per credit hour (up to 12 cred­it hours), which would have in turn also helped out the part-time stu­dents at ULM.

With the increase in fees, athlet­ics would have received $1.8 mil­lion, VAPA would have received $20,000 and the campus beautifi­cation fund would have received $75,000.

However, no matter how much promoting the SGA did for the ref­erendum, students still did not like the idea of increasing fees.

Kristin Nieman, a junior mass communications major from West Monroe, voted “no” because she is juggling school and work, and she felt $130 extra would be hard to cover.

“I have student loans to pay off when I graduate and any money I can save on tuition now matters because it’s not my parents paying for it; it’s me,” Nieman said.

Even though the referendum was voted down, Dugas remains optimistic about future attempts to pass another one.

“SGA con­stantly seeks out methods to help the ULM stu­dent body and their university as a whole,” Du­gas said.

She said that SGA will consider future referen­dums if the group deems it has the appropriate means to help accom­plish that mission.