LA CROSSE, WIS. – Two UW-Eau Claire students attended a UW-Lacrosse Student Senate meeting last Wednesday to share their support for a La Crosse resolution recommending changes to the Board of Regents policies on differential tuition. The UW-L Student Senate unanimously passed the measure.

The resolution seeks to guarantee that future tuition increases be approved by student referendum, according to the resolution document. UW-La Crosse student senator and one of the authors of the resolution, Jennifer O’Neill, said the approval of the Blugold Commitment was the “catalyst” behind the measure.

Along with the Blugold Commitment, the resolution also included a tuition increase at UW-Madison in which “80 percent of students answered that they were either neutral or in opposition to the proposal” which the Board of Regents passed in May 2009.

UW-Eau Claire student senator, senior Collin Hawkins, and former Intergovernmental Affairs Director, senior Armon Tabrizi, were invited to attend the meeting and speak about their feelings about the Blugold Commitment passed by the Board of Regents on Feb. 5.

Hawkins and Tabrizi also spoke at the Board of Regents meeting against the differential tuition increase.

“I think it’s important that students are involved and that students are part of the process,” Tabrizi said in his speech to the La Crosse Student Senate. “They said that they wanted to have students involved . that was not the case.”

Both Hawkins and Tabrizi said they were pleased with the unanimous support of the measure and hoped that more schools in the UW System would follow with similar resolutions.

“This was a victory for quite frankly 70 percent of the Eau Claire student body,” Tabrizi said.

UW-La Crosse graduate student Jeremy Gragert said he was also happy the Student Senate passed the resolution. He said that La Crosse is very “in-tune with UW System politics and policy” which is why they wrote and later passed the resolution.

“The Regents will not be too surprised to hear from La Crosse on this issue,” he said. “They hear from La Crosse a lot.”

La Crosse student senator Ryan Nell said it “blew his mind” that the Board of Regents would pass a tuition increase on any campus that students were overwhelmingly opposed to.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a $5 increase or a $1,200 increase,” he said. “This is something that students didn’t have input on. Students are paying for this. The Board of Regents aren’t paying tuition. The Chancellor’s not paying tuition. The students are paying tuition.”

Nells also said that disregarded student opinion undermined the UW System and the things he felt universities stood for.

Michael Umhoefer, UW-Eau Claire student body president, said he had concerns about the La Crosse resolution, including the fact that the resolution had no student oversight and no recommendation for financial assistance.

UW-Eau Claire Chancellor Brian Levin-Stankevich disagreed with La Crosse’s response to the Blugold Commitment citing the university’s $1,000 fee hike approved by student referendum in 2007. Via the referendum, students voted for the increase which affected only incoming freshmen.

“I’m not telling (UW) Lacrosse how to do things,” Levin-Stankevich said. “I don’t think they should be telling us.”

Click here for information about UW-La Crosse Student Senate.