Shahroze Rauf | Assistant News Editor
Featured Image: Students will now have the choice to opt-out of paying certain ancillary fees this September. | Dylan Stoll
Last week, a meeting regarding the new changes to student tuition and ancillary fees was held.
Business Manager at Excalibur Publications, Eric Rail, attended the meeting. No decisions were made, and everything is still to be determined; however, important information was shared about how opting out of the ancillary fees will work for students.
“Students would have a chance to opt-out only in September. They wouldn’t be able to opt-out or opt back in at a later date. The number of students who did opt-out would be known early in the school year to allow student organizations to plan accordingly,” says Rail.
However, opting out of these fees will affect a lot more than just the university newspaper. Services such as the Food Support Centre, which helps students who are struggling financially to feed themselves, are funded by student ancillary fees.
In a recent interview, outgoing YFS President Rawan Habib expresses her concerns for the negative impact the now optional ancillary fees can have on student services, specifically the Food Support Centre.
“Every month we see more students registering. It’s something they desperately need,” Habib says.
However, some students are thankful for a chance to be able to choose where their money goes.
“I appreciate the choice. A lot of students have existing coverage, such as dental and health, with our parents. So, it’s an expense I can avoid,” says fourth-year health studies student Maria Marquez.
Other students feel differently about how these ancillary fees affect student life, and whether they use certain services or not.
“If you think about it, by paying to increase the quality of life at York and funding these services, even if you never use them, you in turn improve your own school experience because everyone around you will be positively affected. So, I guess it’s probably a good thing to keep it mandatory,” says fourth-year art history student Sara Amoosoltani.
At this time, Rail cannot confirm whether or not it is absolute, but he says students may be able to pick and choose what fees they wish to opt out of.
“It appears that organizations would be listed individually, so that students would be able to pick which ones to fund, as opposed to picking groups and opting out of funding every organization under one group. Because funding to certain student groups would be curtailed, events like Frosh Week, for instance, would not run for an entire week but perhaps one or two days,” says Rail.
These changes can only be seen going forward in the following school year. For now, many student organizations funded by ancillary fees are simply waiting for the ball to drop.
“In any case, it’s a tough call because by making these fees mandatory, we are asking students to pay for university services they may never use. But at the same time, these services benefit the student body and their quality of life at York as a whole. So the real question is more along the lines of the interests for the individual versus that of the collective,” says Amoosoltani.
