ASOSU Congress will be holding a joint session to vote on student fee levels for the next academic year on Wednesday, January 24th, at 6pm in the Memorial Union Ballroom. It will involve discussion on voting for fee level recommendations that will go through our ASOSU president, Simon Brundage, then to university President Ed Ray and the Board of Trustees for final approval.

ASOSU Senate President Radhika Shah said the public is welcome and ASOSU is willing to listen.

“This is probably  one of the biggest things that we do all year. there is so many student fee funded units on campus and a lot of times students don’t even know what those are, but we pay a significant amount to these organizations in these departments, so it’s really important to one, just hear what we’re paying for, but how much we’re actually spending, and this is the moment that we have. Students have say in how much we’re actually willing to put towards some of these missions and these goals,” Shah said.

Since it involves students’ money, Shah encourages students to be aware of how it will be spent. Peter Halajian, Speaker of the House, said that students will have opportunities throughout the session to have their opinions heard.

“You’re going to see what our recommendation is. If they wanted to change something about the student fees, there were meetings last term, every year they do an open meeting for students to come and actually say like ‘change this’, ‘we don’t want to pay this much for this service”

“But it’s important to pay attention to the things that happen in student government (…) It’s important to know who your representatives are and what they’re doing and pay attention to how they’re representing you,” Halajian said.

At the Board of Trustees meeting last week, ASOSU President, Simon Brundage, brought up his prediction for the joint session.

“I don’t expect there to be too much controversy in any of the individual budgets, but I’m going to be crossing my fingers on that one,” Brundage said.

ASOSU is expecting students to be a part of the joint session this Wednesday, and if you want to be even more involved, Shah explains how.

“I just wanted to say again that elections deadline is Friday, if you want to be more involved with student fee process you can run for student fee chair or members at large and the deadlines at noon, so go run for elections,” Shah said.

All students are welcome, and encouraged to come and speak up.

More information for the elections can be found here http://asosu.oregonstate.edu/book/asosu-elections