The multipurpose center was never supposed to be funded by student dollars.
To quote a Post article from May 2, 2012: “Although top Ohio Athletics officials vowed to finance the new multipurpose center completely by donations, two months after the initial deadline, fundraising remains short and student-fee dollars might be used to bridge the gap.”
Those student-fee dollars — to the tune of $822,000, or 3 percent of the General Fee — were allocated to help pay for the multipurpose center.
And students were asked to fork over that money without knowing how much we are going to be able to use the center.
The General Fee money will be used to fund an indoor track for the center, which was originally planned to be a shed with a football field inside. Chad Mitchell, OU’s interim budget director of finance, said “student interest” had prompted the plan for the track.
That interest came from former Student Senate President Kyle Triplett’s campaign efforts, according to past Post articles.
He was quoted as saying that students — both athletes and others — were asking questions about the proposed facility, wondering if it would be “just a football field in there” and how that would benefit non-athletes.
That was Triplett’s mindset when he was the chair of the General Fee Committee. That was the mindset when that same committee endorsed “student fees on the center only if there was a track included.” However, Triplett did not have concrete surveys or data to indicate how many students had shared this opinion.
Without that data, we find it difficult to agree with the university’s decision to use student funds for a center that wasn’t supposed to cost students — and to base that decision on students’ desires.
When the control of the center was passed from the hands of Athletics to Student Affairs, causing a delay in the center’s timeline, Student Affairs decided to use the $822,000 for something that could benefit this year’s students. This is an admirable idea, but how much will we control how that money is used?
In fact, a portion already went to pay for part of the Marching 110’s trip to Shreveport, La. for the football team’s December bowl appearance, even though a set part of the General Fee is already allocated for bowl game costs.
It’s disturbing that student money will be used for the center, going against the university’s original commitment — especially when they based that call on unspecified, undocumented student feedback that we don’t believe represents students’ interests.
Now that this year’s students’ share of the multipurpose center funding will be used for something else — even though some of it has already been spent — university officials should not repeat their mistake; they should let us decide how to use our money.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post’s executive editors.
