Student Senate will vote on a resolution tonight to support a policy change that the Center for Student Legal Services hopes will keep students from taking advantage of its services.
The center is proposing to move the cutoff date for students to waive its $8 legal fee from the fifth week of the quarter to the second, and tonight, senate will propose a resolution to support the move.
A lot of students can go five weeks to see whether or not they need (the legal services) and waive us right there
and that kind of defeats the purpose of even having that deadline said Student Senate President Robert Leary.
Leary sits on the Board of Students, which governs the center and makes decisions about its budget. The board includes Leary, Graduate Student Senate President Tracy Kelly, Student Trustees Chauncey Jackson and Kyle Triplett, several senate commissioners and various students from other organizations, Leary said.
The Center for Student Legal Services provides legal representation to OU students and educates them about landlord-tenant relations and alcohol offenses.
The current system allows students to access the center's services for five weeks, and then waive the fee, Jackson said.
When you have five weeks to decide it's not fair to (the center)
because we're still expected to provide services
Jackson said.
If students have until the second week of the quarter to waive the fee, the office could better plan for the remainder of the quarter, said Kelly, the board's chair.
It's important that we can budget our expenditures of how much money is coming in
Kelly said. It's hard for us to maintain operations if we're not certain of enrollment.
Although no formal survey of students was made to determine support of this change, a recent survey measured student response to a possible increase of the legal fee with the switch from quarters to semesters. Students were presented with a proposal for in increase to $12 a semester for legal service, which would add up to the same amount each year as is being paid each year now. Support for this change was mostly positive, Kelly said.
The one criticism Leary said he heard was that the other student fees, including student health insurance and the WellBeing plan, can be waived during the fifth week.
The board voted to approve the change and will present the plan to the Board of Trustees.
Patrick McGee, managing attorney for the center, estimated that it reached a high point in its customers last year, with about 15,300 students paying the fee. This quarter, he estimated that about 12,900 students paid for the option of using the office's services. He added that about a year ago, the office noticed drops in enrollment of up to 1,500 students at the fifth week of the quarter.
I don't expect there would be a valid basis for objection from the university
said Patrick McGee, managing attorney for the center. If this isn't done
we're giving the option for (providing legal services for) half of the quarter for free. I can't see how anybody would object.
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