Despite guarantees made by former Student Government Association President Steve Geraci, students who will not have the opportunity to use the planned recreation center expansion will likely be paying for it.
"We need to have financing at the time we are spending money on the project, so the fee would start, I suppose, at the point that construction would begin," said Tom Kinghorn, Ball State vice president of Business Affairs. "Theoretically, I guess you would like to say you wouldn't like to start paying until you start using the building, but you have to."
When the rec center expansion was introduced in Student Senate this year, Geraci told senators that students wouldn't begin paying for the expansion until the facilities were completed.
"The brilliant part about this is you won't pay for a building you won't see," he said at the Jan. 18 meeting.
Because the expansion was approved by Indiana State Legislature during the recently completed session, construction is scheduled to begin Fall 2008.
At that time, students will probably begin paying fees, Kinghorn said. According to the timeline, the facilities will open in the summer of 2010.
Under this plan, the current freshman class and next year's incoming freshmen class could be required to pay student fees that would be applied to the rec center construction. Yet, the rec center would not open for use until after they graduate.
"I don't know what to say," Geraci said. "I asked that question specifically in those meetings, and I was always told that students that wouldn't be using the facilities wouldn't be paying for them."
The issue of who will pay for the construction was discussed by Student Senate when considering legislation supporting the rec center expansion, and it affected the vote of some senators.
"It's not right to make them pay for something they would never get any benefit from," said Sen. Tristan White, who voted for the legislation. "I'm not sure I would have voted in favor of it if I knew that students would pay for it that probably wouldn't get any use out of it."
On the other hand, Sen. Matt Lacy said this information would probably not have swayed his vote. Looking at the big picture of how the expansion will benefit the university, he said he would probably still be in favor of it.
"It would have sparked more discussion and interest from the student body, but it wouldn't be enough to change constituents' opinions," he said. "They would see it would be toward the betterment of Ball State and would get over the fact of paying for it."
Tom Morrison, associate vice president for human resources and state relations, said the student support backing the legislation was an important factor in gaining state approval.
Although SGA President Asher Lisec entered office March 15, this will be the first major issue during her term, and she said she planned to bring the issue before Student Senate today to hear the senators' thoughts. Additionally, SGA will need to sit down with administrators to try to find a solution, she said.
"If it's not handled in the right manner it will have a negative effect because it will look like Student Government lied to the students," Lisec said. "To put it honestly, when I heard it before and heard students weren't going to have to pay for it until it was finished I was like 'Wow, that's almost too good to be true.'"
Although this is an inherited problem from the former SGA executives, she said Team Lisec came into the office ready to work and would take this issue on immediately.
"We will take this on as a platform item," Lisec said, "and make sure students get what they want and they are not misled again."
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