When students pay their tuition bills for next semester, the required campus fees section will have increased more than $35 from last semester. Student Senate implements the fees each semester to provide services to KU students.

Fees were changed during the last year to take the total fees per semester from 377.75 to 414.45.

Alex Porte, Great Falls, Va., sophomore and next year’s Student Senate treasurer, said fees had diverse purposes. He said certain fees kept the price of the sports pack down and paid for student health services and the Student Recreation Fitness Center.

Fees were a large issue during this year’s Student Senate election, and Porte said students needed to be aware of where their money was going.

“Students as a rule are more fiscally conservative because it’s their money,” he said.

Porte said Student Senate raised fees in two cases: inflation and a significant increase in services.

“There’s no way to get around inflation, but we want to curb it by being financially responsible,” Porte said.

Increases in service have caused two fees to go up and one new fee to be implemented for next semester.

Student Senate voted during the last full Senate meeting on April 2 to raise the Student Union Activities Fee by 50 cents for next year.

The increase is to cover rising talent fees of visiting artists and celebrities.

Senate also incresed the KU Transportation fee by $6.20 for next year. Margretta de Vries, senior administrative associate for the Parking Department, said that fee increase was to maintain the current services of the bus system and that without the increase routes would have been cut. She said the night campus route would still have to be cut because the department did not get as much of an increase as it wanted.

The only fee the student body voted for was to pay $20 to provide a fare-free bus system to students.

Porte said the campus transportation fee was $16 in 2004 but next semester it would be $56.

Aaron Quisenberry, associate director of the Student Involvement and Leadership Center, said student fees subsidized services the University of Kansas didn’t provide. He said that if students felt a service was important enough they could ask for a fee to cover it.

Porte said an example was the $8 students pay for Legal Services for Students. He said because of the fee, students could visit Legal Services for Students and get free legal help with anything from drawing up legal documents to filing taxes.

Porte said some fees were used for building improvements on campus, such as the wireless implementation fee and the Multicultural Resource Center construction fee.

He said the wireless fee, which is $5, paid for the wireless expansion taking place throughout campus. The expansion is upgrading services in buildings all over campus, most recently the Art and Design Building, Blake Hall, Lindley Hall and Robinson Center.

Porte said the Multicultural Resource Center construction fee, which is $3.50, paid the entire cost of the new Sabatini Multicultural Resource Center next to the Kansas Union and also for longterm maintenance.

In four years, student required campus fees have increased 44 percent, going from $287 in Spring 2004 to $414.45 next semester. Fees are paid by semester.

—Edited by Patrick De Oliveira