Following a university-mandated summer recreational fee
increase two years ago — which raised the compulsory student fee for use of
campus sports facilities during the summer by more than 400 percent — the
Department of Recreation is implementing several new exercise options to relieve
the “immediate sticker shock” and persuade students to head back to UCSD
gymnasiums during the summer. However, officials say they cannot deny the
possibility that fees will increase again when they are re-evaluated next year.
In 2006, UCSD moved to full state funding for the summer,
converting the summer sessions into full academic quarters and requiring the
university to boost all fees in that period to match the fees of the Fall,
Winter and Spring Quarters. Prior to that, the Department of Recreation imposed
a $25 fee for full use of the sports facilities during both summer sessions,
but the mandated conversion required the recreational fee for enrolled summer
students to remain constant throughout the year, raising the summer fee from
$25 to $92.
Controversy arose that same year when former Vice Chancellor
of Student Affairs Joseph W. Watson and Director of Recreation Dave Koch agreed
to extend the same pricing structure — an additional $67 for students enrolled
in summer session — to nonenrolled summer students in order to ensure that both
groups who have full access to the sports facilities pay a fair amount.
Koch said the summer immediately following the fee hike
faced dramatic financial consequences, as total revenues from the summer
recreational card sales dropped almost 80 percent, or nearly $37,000. Although
the new options and influx of new students helped alleviate the loss last
summer, Koch attributed the drastic drop in revenue to the extreme difference
in pricing between the two summers.
“Financially for us, that was a significant loss of
anticipated income … because all the enrolled summer students were now having
to pay the $92 RIMAC fee instead of purchasing those recreational cards,” he
said.
Members of the Athletic, Recreation and Sports Facilities
Advisory Board, a group comprised of both undergraduate and graduate students
that reviews all spending of recreational and athletic student fees, said most
of the revenue lost had to be reappropriated from other sources by a special
request to the advisory board.
“In the name of fairness, every stakeholder lost: Thousands
of nonenrolled students disengaged, hundreds were made to pay an exorbitant fee
and the facilities themselves lost revenue,” ARSFAB member Jonathan Weinberg
said in an e-mail.
In order to further mitigate the cost and give students more
recreational options during the summer, Koch said he has been working with
ARSFAB to provide students with several different options for how to utilize
the facilities. In addition to purchasing the full summer recreational card for
$92, students can now purchase a half-summer recreational card for $46 for any
six-week period during the Summer Quarter, a monthly recreational card for any
four-week period that costs $31 or a $3-per-day pass for RIMAC, main gym and
Canyonview Pool. This summer, an occasional-use pass will also be available for
students who wish to pay for approximately 15 visits to the facilities,
although a price has yet to be assessed for that pass.
Koch, however, believes that faculty, staff, alumni and
community members ought to pay higher prices for use of the gymnasium and
equipment, regardless of the price structure set for students.
“I did make the decision that, rather than a one-time huge
increase for faculty and staff recreational cards, we would spread that over
two to three years, and there’s one more year of that to put in place,” Koch
said. “Ultimately, it will be $35 to $40 a year more for faculty and staff, and
it will be twice that for the community.”
Prices are not necessarily stationary, however. The language
of the original RIMAC referendum, passed in 1995, authorized the university to
reassess the fee level every five years and provided the possibility for the
fee to increase up to $5 quarterly per student. The last increase took place
four years ago, and Koch said that within the next year the fee will be
evaluated by the recreation department, the student affairs office and ARSFAB
members.
Koch said the fee may be raised to cover the expenses of the
RIMAC facility, which include the debt service and maintenance on the building,
allocation for the recreational department and capital reserve projects.
Weinberg said the summer fee hike for both enrolled and
nonenrolled students was necessary.
“Personally, I don’t understand what is more fair about this
since enrolled and non-enrolled students constitute separate demographics
‘fairness’ at all,” he said. “Are we afraid that students would not enroll in
the summer so they could get cheaper gym memberships?”
Koch said he empathizes with students, but believes that the
principle — not the amount of the fee — was what drove him to agree with the
hike.
“On the face of it, $92 is about $31 a month, which is still
pretty reasonable for access to all the sports facilities on campus, even in a
comparable market with private fitness companies,” he said. “But from my
perspective, it wasn’t rational for nonenrolled students to pay a lower fee
than enrolled students.”
