Administrators heed student fee input
By Brad Davis
Senior Reporter
A year before student fees are set to
increase by about 16 percent, $33, some
UNL students might argue fees are too
high.
But few can argue that students at
peer universities have as much control
over their student fees as those at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
administrators said.
Although administrators recently
overturned an ASUN decision to con
tinue tobacco sales in the union, they
said this is uncommon.
Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs
James Griesen said administrators take
pride that they almost always follow
advice from the Association of Students
of the University of Nebraska on how to
spend more than $9 million in students’
University Program and Facilities fees.
Eleven students are on ASUN’s
Committee for Fees Allocation, a group
that evaluates budgets for organizations
and recommends budgets.
CFA makes recommendations to
the regents for portions of fees that are
rarely overturned, Griesen said.
“That recommendation is regarded
very strongly,” said CFA Chairman
Kendall Swenson.“Basically, what we
say goes.”
In the 11 years Griesen has been at
UNL, administrators have undone what
students recommended only once
before, Griesen said.
In the 1980s, students denied about
$800 to a UPC-sponsored gay and les
bian programming committee.
Threatened with a discrimination
lawsuit, Griesen said administrators
reallocated the money into a talks and
topics committee fund.
One decision CFA made this year -
to keep cigarette sales in the Nebraska
Union - will be overturned
Swenson said he thought most stu
dents wanted cigarette sales, but he was
more concerned with the revenue that
would be lost from the tobacco ban.
“I just think as far as our decision
goes,” Swenson said “we want the (lost)
money there, and that’s our number one
concern.”
Griesen said administrators would
work to make up the lost money without
affecting student fees, which next year
will be $240 per student each semester.
Other UNL peer universities - simi
larly sized schools in the Midwest -
don’t give their students as much control
of their student fees, Griesen said
“We’re very unique to the extent that
we involve students,” Griesen said.
“They have the responsibility for
accepting all of the budget requests for
UPFF, and distilling out of that what
they think students would be willing to
pay.”
He said both Fund A and Fund B
organizations had to “argue for every
dime” they get from UPFF.
William Fierke, registrar at the
University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign in Champaign, 111., said
undergraduate students there pay about
$446 per semester in student fees.
If students don’t have insurance,
they must pay an extra $127 per semes
ter for health coverage, Fierke said.
He said students appointed by the
chancellor review budgets.
Though a student fees board is in
place, Fierke said a $36 fee added this
year was not approved by the board and
was opposed by students.
“The only reason (students) were
upset about it was because it got
rammed down their throat,” Fierke said.
Similarly, UNL’s fees committee
had no part in approving the $20 added
to student fees next year to pay for reno
vations to the Nebraska Union.
But, Griesen said, students voted to
“tax” themselves for the union by a
1994 referendum vote.
Students at the University of Iowa
decide where $ 16.02 of their $76.44 per
semester student fee is spent, said
Belinda Mamer, assistant vice president
for student services.
After the student committee makes
recommendations, the budget must be
approved by the vice presidents of
finance and student services, along with
the college’s president and board of
regents.
Allison Miller, president of Iowa’s
student government, said though stu
dents control only $16.02 of their fees,
they are consulted by the administration
for most fees decisions.
“I think one of the things that we see
on our campus,” Miller said, “ is that the
students are happy with the way their
money is spent.”
Muslim woman tries
to defy culture barrier
By Amanda Schindler
Staff Reporter
As a girl, Mahnaz Afkhami never
suspected she would leave her home for
a far-off land and a foreign culture.
But her mother felt differently.
The wife of a feudal landlord in
Kerman, Iran, Afkhami’s mother
dreamed of leaving and becoming inde
pendent despite women’s strict societal
limitations.
When Mahnaz was 11, her mother
packed up her three children and left her
husband and comfortable life. With no
English-speaking skills or money, she
started anew in San Francisco.
Her daughter would forever admire
her for it
During the fourth annual Women s
Studies No Limits Conference Saturday
at the Nebraska East Union, Afkhami
said fundamentalism and feminism
struggle against each other, especially
in Muslim societies.
Afkhami said fundamentalists are
afraid of changes in the status of
women, and many fundamentalist
groups have united to fight feminism
despite differences in religion.
For example, fundamentalist dele
gates from the Vatican worked closely
with Iranian Muslim delegates at the
1995 Beijing International Women’s
Conference, she said.
“The boys got together and had no
problems,” she said. “That’s the way it
was supposed to have been in some
golden time. The fundamentalists unite
across cultures and geography and reli
gion to stop the women.”
She stressed fundamentalism is a
political movement and not a religious
one.
“In Islam, there’s nothing that says
women have to be segregated (from
men) or not go to school,” she said.
But many women hesitated sup
porting feminism for fear of sacrificing
tradition, she said.
“Either you were feminist or you
were Muslim,” she said. “Now women
are very strongly asserting that they
shouldn’t have to choose between cul
ture and religion and feminism.”
Afkhami said another deterrent to
feminism in Muslim society was the
stereotype of the liberated Western
woman.
Muslim women have developed
their own type of feminism, she said,
and stereotypes are fading.
Afkhami urged feminists to unite in
the same manner as fundamentalists.
“The most important thing that we
share is that we want to mess things up,”
she said.
Aiknami said she makes messes
as executive director of the Sisterhood is
Global Institute, an organization that
works to improve women’s rights.
Membership includes women in 70
different countries.
“We all want the same things,” she
said, but stressed that work in Muslim
countries was important because “the
crisis seems to be crystallizing there.”
Often work is done in countries
where feminism has not fully evolved,
and Afkhami said governments are
more docile than expected.
“A lot of governments are not as
smart as you think they would be,” she
said. “Patriarchal governments don’t
take women seriously yet - and that’s a
good thing.”
The Declaration of Human Rights
is another good thing, she said. In its
50th year, the document has been criti
cized by Muslim men for being too
Western, she said.
She disagrees with their rationale.
“I’ve looked at the items and articles
and have never seen a women saying ‘I
don’t want this right,”’ Afkhami said.
Nancy Rosen, director of the
Strengthening Neighborhood
Partnership program, said she was very
impressed with Afkhami’s message.
“Rights are not Western, Eastern,
Islamic or Christian,” Afkhami said.
“They are human.”
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