Three Tier III organizations at the University of Connecticut, the Undergraduate Student Government, Nutmeg Publishing and The Daily Campus, are requesting a fee increase. Students will have the opportunity to vote on each request in the referenda on the joint elections ballot from noon on Tuesday, March 4 to noon on Thursday, March 6.
According to the UConn website, the referenda is one piece of information that the Student Activity and Service Fee Advisory Committee (SASFAC) considers when making recommendations to the administration. If approved, the increase would take effect no earlier than the Fall 2025 semester.
Each of the six Tier III undergraduate organizations at Storrs is supported by the Student Activity Fee that appears on the semester fee bill. Currently, the fee is $96, providing $45 to USG, $23 to the Student Union Board of Governors (SUBOG), $10 to The Daily Campus, $9 to WHUS Radio, $5 to UConn Student Television (UCTV) and $4 to Nutmeg.
This year, USG is requesting a $5 increase from $45 to $50 per semester, Nutmeg is requesting a $3 increase from $4 to $7 per semester and The Daily Campus is requesting a $2 increase from $10 to $12 per semester.
All active Tier II undergraduate organizations on the Storrs campus are eligible for funding through USG. According to USG Comptroller Sydney Whittaker, this year’s club funding balance is $1,050,000 and about $960,000 has been used as of Friday.
“The demand has definitely gone up every year, and we’re really seeing that,” Whittaker said. “I think this year was the first year we’re recognizing we’ve reached a capacity with serving student organizations.”
Whittaker added that USG has had to deny requests from Tier II organizations that do not meet their policies due to the high demand.
“I feel so bad denying requests and all this stuff, especially things that fall under people’s RSO missions, but we’ve just been getting people on specific policies, which just feels inequitable and wrong to me,” Whittaker said. “So just because we physically don’t have the money to get everybody their funding[…]having to get people on specific policies and denying based on those things is just what we’ve had to do, and it has really sucked.”
Nutmeg Publishing sends free copies of the yearbook to graduating fee-paying Storrs students. Yearbooks are meant to be delivered in November so that the organization has time to finish content collection and because most graduates are at their address on file around Thanksgiving, according to Editor-in-Chief Josie Simon.
The fee increase is still very important to Nutmeg though. The fee instead will go towards printing a better-quality yearbook.
Josie Simon, Nutmeg Publishing Editor-In-Chief
Simon explained that Nutmeg finished producing the 2024 yearbook last fall and has already begun designing the 2025 yearbook, the first time in years that Nutmeg has caught up on production. In past years, Nutmeg has had to print the class yearbook a year after graduation.
“Using the 2023 yearbook as an example – the content (writing, photos) was collected during the 2023-2023 school year, and then the spreads were designed during the whole 2024 school year. The yearbook was then printed during the summer of 2024, and 2023 graduates received their yearbooks around July/August of 2024,” Simon wrote in an email.
According to Simon, yearbooks have been behind in printing because the organization does not have enough money.
“Nutmeg has been unable to ‘catch up’ on printing because we only bring in $144,000/year,” Simon said. “However, printing the yearbook is around $95,000 since we print a copy for each graduating senior, around 4700 for 2023 grads, and now around 4800 for 2024 grads. This year we already paid for the printing of the 2023 yearbook, which does not leave us enough money to also print the 2024 yearbook.”
USG recently approved a motion to sponsor the 2024 yearbook, which has helped Nutmeg catch up, according to Simon. However, Nutmeg is still requesting a fee increase to improve the quality of printing.
“USG senate and internal affairs board recently approved the motion to sponsor the 2024 Nutmeg yearbook, which everyone at Nutmeg is so excited about. We have now not only caught up on producing the yearbook, but we will be able to print the yearbook earlier than anticipated, and thus ‘catch up’ on printing starting with the 2025 yearbook,” Simon added. “[…]The fee increase is still very important to Nutmeg though. The fee instead will go towards printing a better-quality yearbook.”
Simon emphasized that financial constraints have limited the number of pages and events that Nutmeg can cover in the yearbook.
“Due to our financial constraints, we print a bare bones yearbook. It is only 232 pages, with roughly 60 pages being senior portraits. More pages [equals] more money that Nutmeg has to spend on printing, which we just don’t have in our budget. In the past, Nutmeg has printed yearbooks that are closer to 400 pages, and we would love to be able to do that again. With a fee increase, we can increase our yearbook contract, thus increasing the quality of the yearbook. This would include covering more events, organizations and clubs and a better-quality yearbook cover,” Simon said.
The Daily Campus, according to Business Manager Naiiya Patel, has had to downsize each year due to rising costs of printing the paper.
“[…]With the cost of printing going up and then all these costs increasing, like the minimum wage etc., The Daily Campus has just been forced to downsize every year versus stay consistent like we want to,” Patel said. “And especially with printing getting more expensive[…] It’s evident that people do enjoy a physical presence, because physical media, you know, you’re faced with it[…And] there are a multitude of reasons why we want to keep printing, even though it’s getting expensive, but also with payroll, which is not in our control, minimum wage keeps going up, and we have to pay for it.”
According to Patel, The Daily Campus has had to reduce staff and implement wage limits due to limited amounts of money. This is also the third consecutive year that The Daily Campus is requesting a fee increase.
“[…]When reviewing our documents, we’ve made cuts everywhere we could, by reducing staff, by putting wage limits on like sections for staff, writers, photographers and artists, we’ve done a lot of what we’re allowed to do before we kind of start decreasing what The Daily Campus really is, which is why we’ve chosen to continue with the fee increase,” Patel explained.
Patel and Whittaker are both also on the SASFAC committee. Whittaker serves as the USG representative and Patel serves as an undergraduate student.