Sustainability fee
How do you feel about paying a sustainability fee?
The money question may not be “Where is it going?”
By Miyeko Inafuku, minafuku@du.edu
When I read “How they spend your money” in the Feb. 23 Clarion, I was not so concerned with where my money is going. I already knew that besides RTD, DUPB gets the biggest chunk of money.
Chunk is such a disgusting word, by the way. I can’t believe it has 57 entries on Urban Dictionary.
You may know that I know, thanks to the dialogue sparked over an opinion piece that I wrote. Trust me, DUPB is not the bad guy here. Its University Programming Support Committee is actually a good logistical and financial resource for other campus organizations.
No, DUPB did not pay me to say this. But that’s not a bad idea…
What concerned me was where the money was coming from. I had never seen a sustainability fee on my bill, so I was confused. A sustainability fee sounded like a worthwhile thing, but I didn’t know why I didn’t know about it. If the money was being used well, then why was the fee possibly being disguised? So I pulled out my graphing calculator, and sat down to do some math.
Yup, a graphing calculator, for stuff I should have been able to do in my head. Turns out, when you don’t have to take any math classes in college, you start to lose the will to do math. That’s assuming that you had the will in the first place, of course.
To quote from the article, “the total amount generated from these two fees is $1,454,033.” Two fees? Like I said, I’ve never seen a sustainability fee. What I do see is a $107 per quarter activity fee.
Don’t worry, my brain reclaimed some of its former mathlete glory figuring out what the article meant. It said that students pay a $192 activity fee per year along with a $129 sustainability fee. Well watch this:
$192 + $129 = $321
$107 x 3 = $321
$321 = $321
Tada! Confusion gone! This means that each quarter, $43 of our activity fee really goes toward sustainability.
Now, what I’d still like to know is why didn’t anyone tell me about this before?
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