Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Wright State University’s board of trustees will consider building a standalone recreation center following a campus-wide vote that showed students narrowly agree the school should charge them a new fee to help construct such a facility.
A survey given to students earlier this year asked if they would vote for or against a series of proposals with fees ranging from $180 to $260 per semester to help fund the construction.
Just under 19 percent of students at WSU cast a ballot in the referendum, with 1,362 voting in favor of paying for a new rec center and 1,287 voting against it. The measure passed by a margin of 75 votes on a campus that has around 14,000 undergraduate students.
“Obviously the margin was pretty slim,” said Daniel Palmer, president of Wright State’s undergraduate student government and a graduating senior. “I think it shows there’s a lot of deep wounds at this institution and a lot of division.”
By the numbers
- $260: Maximum WSU students would pay per semester for new rec center.
- $21,032: Tuition and fees per year for a student from Ohio living on campus.
- 19: Percent of students who participated in campus-wide vote.
- 14,000: Approximate number of undergraduate students at WSU’s main campus.
- 75: Margin of students who voted to pay for new rec center.
Wright State has been through a tumultuous few years that have included a 20-day faculty strike, a $1-million settlement for a federal investigation into visa misuse and budget cuts that resulted in the university reducing spending by around $53 million.
The proposal for a new recreation center previously came up in the 1990s and in 2014 before most recently emerging as an idea from strategic planning, said Eric Corbitt, director of the WSU student union. Wright State currently has less space and staff dedicated to recreation than any other four-year public universities in Ohio, Palmer said.
But, state leaders have been resistant in allowing colleges to charge students more fees. If passed by the legislature, Gov. Mike DeWine’s current budget proposal would not allow schools to add fees in the next two years, Randy Gardner, chancellor of the Ohio Department of Higher Education recently told the Dayton Daily News.
The recreation center proposal and referendum is something the board of trustees has applauded and chairman Doug Fecher said trustees will consider the idea. Fecher commended the students on their work and said it’s “too early to tell” if the school will move forward with the idea or what the facility’s timeline would look like.
