This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
By a narrow margin, Utah State University students this week voted to ratchet up their fees to pay for a proposed recreation center and renovate the Logan campus' intramural fields.
The fee, which will eventually rise to $150 a year once the facility is complete in 2015, will be used to pay down a $30 million bond needed to build the Aggie Recreation Center and Legacy Fields.
"Students got to choose. If it didn't go we wouldn't have brought it to the trustees," said university spokesman Tim Vitale. The vote was 2,586 to 2,452 and involved just students at USU's main campus. Students at USU regional campuses will not pay the new fee.
Campus conservatives vocally opposed the measure, which had been developed and championed by past and current student leadership.
"This has been a need for a long, long time. Twelve years ago students voted on a project like this but it got shut down by the Legislature," said student president Erik Mikkelsen, a finance and communication major. "The demand is growing like crazy for rec facilities. Around the country students look first at academics and second at rec facilities to decide which university to go to."
USU trustees on Friday approved the fee hike and the rec center proposal, which still require sign-off by the State Board of Regents and the Legislature. The first phase of the fee, which amounts to $50 a year, goes into effect next year. Coupled with incidental fee increases, the new levy will drive up students' annual fee burden by about 10 percent, from $825.88 to $909.70, according to Vitale.
Although the rec center is a few years off, students will begin reaping the project's benefits this fall.
"Part of it is replacing the grass on HPER field with artificial turf and they're putting lights up," Vitale said. "We had 30 or 40 intramural teams who couldn't play last year. The lighted fields will allow them to play on students' schedule, till 9 or 10 p.m., and they will be able to plow the snow off early."
The project will also accommodate students' growing interest in wellness, according to Mikkelsen.
"That's something students think a lot about. And [the center] creates a good social atmosphere," he said.