By snoadmin
Director of Housing & Residential Life Stan Olin said that early next fall, he will request a range of housing fee increases at the next Student Fee Advisory Committee meeting in addition to the 2 percent fee increase for next year.
The rate increases will help fund Cal State Long Beach’s housing expansion project if they are approved. Olin said that he would propose a range of rate increases over several years, so that the housing office wouldn’t have to make a proposal every year.
The Student Fee Advisory Committee meets once every spring and fall semester. Its last meeting was on May 10. Vice President of Student Services Douglas Robinson chairs the committee, which is comprised mostly of students. According to Olin, the housing office elected not to go until next fall, because Olin said he wants to have as much information as he can before he approaches the committee.
“When I go,” Olin said, “I need to be able to lay out in a very clear fashion, how we’re doing financially, how we are expected to do, how do we compare to people that are around us, how do we compare to best of the folks in the CSU, where do we plan to go for the future. I can do a little better job than that next fall, because I can [bring the] financial information for this year.”
The information includes profits and losses of CSULB in comparison to other universities in California, including the CSUs and other schools such as UCLA and USC.
“As a self-supportive program, we’re going to build new buildings, and we’ve got to pay for them from the student fees,” Olin said. “We tried very hard to keep a lid on our rates. Several years … we didn’t raise rates at all. We haven’t raised rates every year.”
Student opinion about the proposal is still mixed.
Daniel Bergher, a sophomore, said that despite the increase in tuition, he would be willing to pay more for housing because the money would pay for increased residence space.
“I think that the school does need more housing. I think this school should try to be less of a commuter school and more of a residence school,” Bergher said. “Living on campus where there’s only 2,000 students is OK, but you feel very much like the minority in this school … I would be more willing to pay more money for that than I would be for tuition money.”
Christina Hopkins, a freshman, said she already thinks that the 10 percent tuition increase for the fall is “crazy,” and that she doesn’t want to pay more for housing.
“At that price, I don’t think I’d be housing here,” Hopkins said. “I probably [would] be commuting, probably with another friend.”
Olin said raising housing fees is almost the hardest thing a housing director can do.
“On the one hand, I’m in charge of running a successful business operation here, as we’re a self-supporting entity. We’re not allowed to lose money, so it has to make viable financial sense,” Olin said. “The other charge I have is to be a student advocate in housing. I need to make sure we’re doing the right things in the right way as inexpensively as we can … When you consider a rate increase that that spends some time in effect, you might say I consider myself seeing it from both ends and trying to come up with a workable solution.”
