This is an archived story posted by Jesse Helmer. You can view the original here.

A committee of Students' Council is recommending against the implementation of online strikable fees. The committee, which first met in mid-January and is chaired by Feds President Brenda Koprowski, produced a nine-page report about incidental fees. The report contains five general recommendations and four appendices.

• Advisory Committee on the Collection of Incidental Fees: Report to FEDS Council (PDF)

Five general recommendations:

1. The current system should be improved
2. Contracts between stakeholders should be formalized
3. A Feds protocol for new fees should be created
4. Students should be surveyed periodically
5. Feds should not support a referendum on strikable fees

Improving the current system

Under the general recommendation to improve the current system, the committee makes seven more specific recommendations:

1. aid in the development of an active educational program informing students about all student-funded organizations at the University of Waterloo
2. advertise refund days and refund period (including information on organizations that collect incidental refundable fees in campus publications)
3. develop and implement a common refund protocol for all organizations1
4. educate students on using existing mechanisms to introduce new fees (see below)
5. hold at least one refund day per term for each faculty on campus, in a building of the choice that faculty student society, union, or membership
6. hold at least one refund day per term in the SLC
7. work with UW admin to improve student comprehension of fee system

Other recommendations

The committee also recommends that Feds negotiate a memorandum of agreement with each "student corporation external to the Feds." A draft memorandum of agreement is included in the report.

The committee further recommends the creation of a new fee protocol. Says the report: "Fees collected by UW and given directly to the Imprint Publications, Waterloo, Radio Waterloo, and WPIRG are membership fees in these bona fide corporations that are audited and follow corporate protocols of accountability."

The report continues, "This is much different than students simply making a 'donation' to an unincorporated student organization or initiative. To ensure accountability, these types of fee initiatives could be administered directly through the FedS. Created through referenda, these new fees for unincorporated bodies could be collected, disbursed, and refunded via the FedS."

Appendices cover possible fee systems, information about how other school's handle incidental fees

The four appendices comprise six of the report's nine pages. Appendix 1 sets out seven possible incidental fee systems; Appendix 2 is a chart of fee systems at Canadian universities; Appendix 3 describes the challenges of using Council Procedure 7 to govern referenda on external organizations; and Appendix 4 is an example memorandum of agreement.

Council to discuss the report this weekend

The report is the first item under Committee Reports on the agenda for council's March meeting. The meeting begins at 12:30 p.m. on 17 March 2003. It will be held in the Multipurpose room of the SLC.

• More council discussion on incidental fees 9 Feb 2003
• Committee decides to research how other schools handle fees 17 Jan 2003
• Fee referendum motion morphed into discussion item 12 Jan 2003
• Fees under debate Imprint 17 Jan 2003