Attendance at the latest Student Success Fee forum increased to 28 students on Wednesday — a marked increase from the lone attendee at the previous forum. Although a portion of the audience was made up of students required to attend for a class, associate vice provost Kimi Ikeda said the increase was due to better exposure of the fee and meetings, as well as a more informed student body.
“I think just the publicity in the Mustang Daily is actually helping stir up the concern and the questions,” Ikeda said. “The more people that know about it, the more people are talking about it to their friends and telling them to come. I hope it continues — we want those students to be informed.”
This was the fifth of nine forums scheduled to discuss the upcoming Student Success Fee vote on Feb. 29.
At that time, students will vote on whether they would be willing to pay an additional $160 per quarter beginning Fall 2012, with the fee increasing $50 per quarter until a total fee of $260 per quarter is reached. Although exactly what the fees would go toward cannot be determined at this time, Ikeda said in the forum they could possibly help to remedy a range of issues within Cal Poly created by the recent budget cuts.
With four more forums to go, Ikeda said she hopes the upward trend in attendance will continue, because informed students are essential to reaching an acceptable decision on the fee.
“It’s not just the presentation,” Ikeda said. “It’s the questions afterwards that probably provide the most information and are the most helpful, because you can address the students’ specific question or concerns rather than trying to hit everybody’s more generally. I think (those students) walk out with more information than they came in with.”
One student who said he learned from the forum is biomedical engineering senior Aaron Rowley. Rowley said although his perspective may not have changed positively toward the proposed fee, the forums are still an important resource for students to become informed.
“I’ve been having a lot of these discussions with friends about the fees, and we’ve all tossed around what we think they are, and coming here has kind of shattered what I thought — not necessarily in a good way,” Rowley said. “It’s kind of shown me that with whom I’ve been speaking with, there is not a consensus about what the fees are about. And I think most students see it as just a fee; they don’t really understand where it is coming from, what it is necessarily going to be going towards.”
Although he plans to attend more of the forums, Rowley said he wants even more to be done to reach out to and teach students about the proposed fee.
“I would like to see the administration and maybe the office(Ikeda) represents to do a better job at giving students more of a voice,” he said. “It’s great that they host these forums for students to come to, but you know, the nature of being a student is that you’re busy. I would like to see the issue brought to the students, as opposed to ‘You come and listen to us.'”
Rowley said this could be done by giving students a time in class to debate the fee, rather than going to a presentation where the information is handed to students passively.
“(Ikeda) said we’re not here to argue or debate, but I’d actually like to see that,” he said. “There needs to be debate — there needs to be some heated exchange in order for things to change. As of now, they’re kind of just presenting to us their solution, and essentially saying the only solution you have is to vote. But there’s a lot more that needs to go into this decision before we can vote.”
Even though Rowley said the forums don’t encourage voices among students, sociology senior Amy Anderson had no problem finding her voice at the meeting. Anderson dominated the question and answer portion of the forum, but did so for the sake of gaining information, she said.
“I feel kind of bad because I felt like I was kind of attacking (Ikeda) when I asked my questions and I didn’t mean to,” she said. “But I think it was actually helpful to talk with someone who has some sort of power and be like, ‘Well, can you understand my viewpoint on it?’ I think that I’m not the only one who feels the way I do, and hopefully with more people speaking up, there will be more (saying), ‘Maybe we should reevaluate how we’re feeling.'”
Anderson said since learning about the Student Success Fee, she has tried to help inform other students about the importance of the issue.
“I think that overall with what I have seen at Cal Poly … is that students seem to be rather apathetic about the issues,” Anderson said. “I think this is just one more issue where students (feel) like, ‘Whatever.’ Now I’m finally getting annoyed, and like, ‘No, let’s fix this.'”
The next Student Success Fee Forum will be held Feb. 13, at noon in the University Union, room 220. Students can vote on the fees through their Cal Poly Portals Feb. 29, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.