Ian Hinze, Campus Carrier News Editor

The Student Activity Fee (SAF), may increase by $26 a year starting next semester if the Board of Trustees votes to change it this weekend. The current fee is $75 per semester.

The Student Activities Fee pays for all Berry sponsored events and is managed by the SGA’s Budget and Finances committee. The money is also distributed to different organizations officially sponsored by Berry. The fee increase will help groups like KCAB expand.

Graphic by Chelsea Hoag, Managing Editor Colleges and universities above are similar to Berry in population and academics.

Sophomore Jessica Gross, SGA treasurer, detailed the reasons for the change.

“Every student (already) pays $75 each semester to go towards student activities fees, and this is a fee that’s paid by every student on every campus in the United States,” Gross said. “But ours is extremely low and we do a lot of events on campus, and we want the chance to make events at Berry bigger and better.”

Gross said that compared to other campuses, Berry’s student activity fee is very low and has remained so for years.

“We’ve never increased the rate at all, so based on general inflation and overall raising of prices, there has been an overwhelmingly positive response to raising the student activity fees,” she said.

Gross said the change comes as a response to an unprecedented funds shortage encountered earlier this year.

“We have never gotten close to (using) all the funds provided each year, and then this year we had to turn away allocation requests because we couldn’t afford it based on the original student activity fee,” Gross said. “We needed more funds in order to provide for what groups on campus want to do. It’s for all of the organizations on campus to do what they want to do.”

Gross said that with an inadequate fund, SGA had to make hard decisions about how to allocate the SAF.

“We had to be more specific and very careful about the requests we received,” she said. “We had to be very clear about what to allocate to … there were some groups we couldn’t allocate as much to as before, so that we could allocate funds to as many events that promote campus vibrancy. We limited travel requests to groups that were competing for Berry. The only other group was KCAB, which goes to a conference to decide every performer that comes to Berry’s campus.”

The fee change was met with unanimous support by SGA and the Student Life Council. It goes for a vote by the Board of Trustees this weekend.

 “It’s been approved by the SGA and the Student Life Council, and it has now moved onto the Board of Trustees, who approve all budget changes for the school year, and they’ll vote on it this weekend,” Gross said. “26 extra dollars may not seem like much, but it will go a long way.”