|
Dear Students, We have some news on Gym Fee issue. This is some crucial data about the gym fee. It includes budget of the recreation center for last year and this year (projected) and the membership data for several years including this semester. And here is the adminstration's response to GSS proposal. They concluded that 125 should be maintained while summer price may be reduced to 40. GSS will continue work on this issue and will not give up.
FYI . Here is an email response from GSS on the gym data, but before we got the response.
Dear VC Hatch and Director McCutcheon,
We appreciate your help in preparing the membership and budget data for the Graduate Student Senate.
According to the data, we can observe a deep decrease of membership from graduate students (as well as other groups). In previous years, the membership showed a steady growth pattern with a stable revenue out of that. However, for this fall semester, students enrollment decreases by more than 90% from last fall. The explanation of that, as we presented in the last meeting, lies mainly in the dramatic increase of membership fee. Just a reminder of the student survey result, more than 90% of graduate students decide not to purchase membership because of the price increase. The result from the survey is perfectly compatible with the real enrollment data.
This huge decrease in membership has two main implications for the recreation center operation and students' health.
1. The goal of increasing revenue out of membership is not going to be achieved.
By increasing the price, you can get more revenue only if the demand is inflexible, that is, people will continue purchase regardless of price change. However, this is not the case here manifested by the survey and the actual membership data.
For example, last fall's membership number is 552 for graduate students, which generate $22080 (552*40); for this semester, membership number is 46 for graduate students, and the revenue is $5750 (46*125). So the huge increase in price does not cause a revenue increase, but decrease by 75%.
In current budget crisis context, it is crucial to understand this relationship between price and revenue. The university can generate much more revenue (more than 75%) than now by just lowering the gym price.
2. The prohibition of students from gym
So many students, who were regular exercising, stopped doing so this semester. The increase in price, under current financial constraint faced by graduate students, is totally preventing them from exercising and health.
It is certain that this will have longer negative effects on students' health and their productivity, which would of course negatively affect the university's future. That is something totally opposite to the university's motivation of increasing fees. After all, we are serving the students, not students serving us.
Chancellor Holub is leading us to become one of the top national research universities. The prohibition of students from health and productivity is not going to contribute to that process at all.
We, as graduate student representatives, ask for your consideration of our proposals presented in last meeting. If you are going to have meetings discussing that, we would love to send a grad student representative to join the meeting. Otherwise, an open forum with students to address the questions they have about the budget and gym fee is necessary.
best,
Zhun Xu
GSS President
|
