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Policy Statement
The Student Services Fee (SSF) funds services and activities that enhance the student experience for the student body as a whole. SSF-funded programs and facilities foster a sense of community among students, support their health and wellbeing, provide them with engagement opportunities, and assist them with many challenges. The University recognizes that its educational mission is best served when students have the means and opportunity to engage in dynamic discussions and activities around a series of diverse topics both inside and outside of the classroom.
The Student Services Fee is assessed each term. The fee is mandatory for all students enrolled in a degree program and registered for six or more credits per semester or three or more credits per summer session. Students are charged the SSF to create “common goods” that are available to students who pay the fee. The SSF is not based on actual usage of services by an individual student or an individual student’s ability to access or interest in accessing a specific one of the array of SSF-funded services. Students who are not automatically assessed the SSF may have the option of paying the full fee if they wish to access the fee-related services. Post-secondary education option (PSEO), concurrent high school enrollment, Senior Citizen Education and the Regents Tuition Benefits students are not automatically assessed and may not opt in to the Student Services Fee.
Each campus will develop and maintain a set of procedures for administering the SSF assessed to students under Board of Regents Policy: Tuition and Fees. SSF funds may not be used for partisan political purposes.
Each campus’s SSF administration procedures must include the following:
- The establishment of a committee that will make recommendations to the appropriate campus leader on how the fee will be allocated.
- Committee membership must have a student majority.
- Student committee members must demonstrate payment of the SSF each semester of their appointment (excluding summer session).
- Committee selection process and expectations for committee members must be clearly defined.
- The committee will be supported by university staff.
- A process for the creation of special assessments of the SSF for all students or for clearly defined classes of students.
- Clear criteria and process for application for SSF funds and a process for how allocation recommendation decisions will be made.
- Clear criteria and procedures for appeals of allocation recommendation decisions.
- A requirement that any student group seeking SSF funds comply with the University’s Equal Opportunity Statement.
- Guidelines for committee decision making that are consistently applied and are viewpoint neutral and reasonable.
Reason for Policy
This administrative policy implements Section IV, subsection 3, in Board of Regents Policy: Tuition and Fees. It provides a framework for each campus to administer the Student Services Fee for the benefit of the campus and student body in a viewpoint-neutral and reasonable manner.