The University Park Student Fee Board convened Friday to allow its five subcommittees to present updates on their progress. 

Board Chair Tyler Akers kicked off the meeting by presenting budgeting statistics from last year’s fee allocation session. He noted that last year’s fee board allocated approximately $12.9 million to different programming groups on campus. These groups spent approximately $12.4 million of the allocation according to Akers. 

“That Fee Board did a pretty good job of reading the needs,” Akers said. 

Akers then turned the meeting over to each subcommittee for updates. 

University Park Allocation Committee (UPAC) Chair Dan Stauffer said that the Subcommittee on Research Travel is combing through Student Fee and Activity Fee handbooks to better understand the Board’s current policies. The committee is also examining UPAC travel allocation requests from the past three years to develop a statistical understanding of student requests for travel funding. 

“It’s been a steady increase of independent requests … Most of them being requests to present research at some kind of conference,” Stauffer noted.

Fee Board Secretary and University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA) Speaker of the Assembly Bhavin Shah presented the Subcommittee on Standardization’s update, announcing that the Board’s updated allocation request form is live on its website. Forms are due by the final day of the fall semester at 11:59 p.m. A standing subcommittee will review each form and decide which requests will be examined by the entire Board. 

UPUA President Cody Heaton said that the Subcommittee on Summer Fee Assessment had scheduled further research meetings and discussed possible Summer Fee Structures. These structural possibilities ranged from a single, overarching Summer Fee to a total collected from each individual summer session. Heaton also said that the subcommittee would work to specify each campus office’s summer spending. 

UPUA Vice President Laura McKinney announced that the Subcommittee on the Liquidity Program began its effort to coordinate with other Big Ten schools in order to learn from different student funding models. 

Akers followed McKinney’s presentation with an update on the Graduate Student Fee, announcing that it would be collected more often next fall in accordance with enrollment to increase the Fee Board’s allocation budget. 

Stauffer then presented a UPAC update. He reminded the Board that his organization’s review of Movin’ On — which will feature a presentation and question and answer session and is open to the public — will take place at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday, October 2, in room 134 in the HUB.

Stauffer noted that the review would address last year’s chaotic headliner cancellation due to weather. He also updated the Board on UPAC’s reserve funding, which cushions the organization in the event of overallocation due to unexpected enrollment figures.