YSU trustees approve plans for rec center

'Students are hungry for this,' a student told trustees about the recreation center.
By RON COLE
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Youngstown State University trustees gave President David Sweet the green light to begin raising private funds for a $12 million student recreation center.
The trustees finance committee also approved an 8.9-percent tuition increase Thursday to help make up for cuts in state funding and proposed spending increases in the 2002-03 university budget.
Discussions about a campus recreation center date back nearly a decade but seem to be picking up steam.
The finance committee voted 5-1, giving Sweet permission to move forward with fund-raising to build the facility, which would include a gym, theater, lounges, aerobics center, weight room, racquetball courts and indoor track.
In the plans: Preliminary plans call for adding the recreation center onto the west side of Kilcawley Center, the university's student center.
"I believe that we could and can raise the money," Sweet said, noting that no student fees or state funds will be used to build the center.
All students would, however, be charged a mandatory fee to help operate the center, whether or not they use it: $40 per semester for full-time students and $25 for part-time.
That's what led trustee Larry Esterly to vote against the plan.
Esterly questioned how many YSU students really want the center and would use it. Only about 7.6 percent of YSU's approximately 12,000 students live on campus.
"This would make YSU more expensive at a time when we're raising tuition semester after semester and probably will be raising it in the future," he said.
Sweet and other trustees, however, said the center is needed to promote healthy lifestyles, help recruit more students and remain competitive. Kent State University opened a $31 million recreation center three years ago and the University of Akron will open a $41.6 million facility next year.
Agreed to fee: Jeff Parks, a student trustee, said other universities levy recreation center fees as high as $75. And he noted that YSU students agreed in a referendum vote two years ago to pay a fee to build a new recreation center.
"Students are hungry for this," he said. "I'm extremely confident that students will respond well to this."
Tuition increase: Meanwhile, the 8.9-percent tuition increase won unanimous support of the finance committee and will go to a vote of the full board March 27.
Undergraduate tuition for Ohio residents will go from $2,294 for the spring semester, which is under way, to $2,498 for the fall semester, which begins in August. It's the third tuition increase in a year. Tuition jumped 5.1 percent last fall semester and 5.5 percent this spring.
Sweet projects that YSU will have $106.82 million in general fund revenue for fiscal year 2003 but $111.22 million in expenditures. Funds generated by the tuition increase will make up the $4.4 million difference, he said.
Among the new expenditures is $5.12 million for employee salaries, fringe benefits and part-time and summer faculty, $2.5 million to help implement parts of the university's new strategic plan and $1 million to launch a new administrative computing system.
The finance committee also agreed to boost dormitory charges 7 percent from $4,970 to $5,320 a year and to change the university's bulk-hour tuition rate.
Students taking 12 to 18 academic credits a semester are charged the same bulk rate. In the fall, the bulk rate will change to 12 to 16 credits. Students taking more than 16 credits will pay $122 more per credit. The change should generate about $300,000 a year.