During the Associated Students of the University of Arizona meeting on April 5, the senate was split during a vote on a bylaw proposed by College of Fine Arts Senator Kincaid Rabb.
The bylaw which initially read as “The Senator for the College of Fine Arts shall not be required to discuss, review, or report upon fees of the College of Fine Arts,” had been altered during discussion to replace the word “shall” with “may.”
The senate voted 7-7 with 3 senators abstaining from the vote, effectively killing the bylaw, as it required a two-thirds majority vote.
President Michael Finnegan was the biggest opponent to the bylaw as he is currently at the forefront of ASUA involvement in college-specific fee talks.
“As a senator, it is your duty to represent your constituents whether you are for or against the fee at all,” Finnegan said.
“You could be entirely for ‘x’ course fee, ‘x’ differential tuition or ‘x’ program fee, but you should be allowed to be in those conversations and understand what your fee is going to,” he added.
In an interview on April 3, Rabb expressed his desire to give the College of Fine Arts senator the option to sit-in or opt-out to help keep the college’s fees out of a discussion where he felt only downsizing would occur.
“You can’t just lower fees for a specialized college and expect for the programs not to be diminished,” Rabb said.
Rabb felt that if unfamiliar eyes looked upon the fees that he presented, there would be a race to the bottom and only students in the College of Fine Arts would suffer.
“It goes back to that negligent attitude that the arts are a luxury,” Rabb said.
“Because it gives people the power to say, ‘that doesn’t look necessary,’” he said.
He noted that there was no fat to be trimmed in the budget as it was already minimal in its current state.
“If you don’t have an accompanist, you don’t have music.” Rabb said, pointing to a fee associated with a dance program in the college.
Rabb maintained that the college was very transparent with the fees that students must pay as a Fine Arts major and that those fees are a subsidized version of what might be required outside of the university.
“If each individual person had to pay their separate fee to an outside source, the value would double or even triple,” Rabb said.
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