INDEXSan Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1913

TTOODDAAYY @@ SSTTAATTEEDeadline to apply for Spring

2011 admission

“Mark Twain: An AmericanOriginal”

Celebrating 40 Years ofWomen’s Studies

sports ... 2 relationships ... 3 entertainment ... 6 classifieds ... 7 backpage ... 8

The SDSU football teamwrapped up training camplast weekend. page 2

CAMP FINISHESHow to escape the treacherous friend zone.

page 3

FRIEND ZONEJohn Mayer charmed audiences at Cricket WirelessAmphitheatre. page 6

SUMMER SONGS

dailyaztecTuesday, August 31, 2010 Vol. 96, Issue 3 www.TheDai l yAz tec .com Tw i t te r : TheDa i l yAz tec

the

Last March the students of SanDiego State voted in favor of theModern Space referendum, whichwould increase student fees by $94per semester beginning in the fallsemester of 2013.

A total of 4,045 votes were cast,which accounts for 14 percent of theSDSU population. Of those studentswho voted, 54.4 percent were infavor of increasing fees for the futureincoming classes in order to build anew student union.

Some of the features of the newAztec Center Student Union includedoubling its size, adding more foodvenues, building a third story,increasing the amount of conferencerooms for student organizations andreducing 40 percent of its energy use.

But even after the referendumpassed and plans were set in motionto begin moving Associated Studentsoffices out of Aztec Center, thedebate regarding the fee increasecontinued and students were stillasking questions.

Many of these questions werebrought to The Daily Aztec, so twowriters followed up with A.S. repre-sentatives about many of the issuesstudents asked regarding the newAztec Center Student Union.

The following is what The DailyAztec uncovered after speaking withcurrent A.S. Executive Vice President

Sean Kashanchi and Aztec CenterDirector Lynn Cacha.

Haven’t students alreadybeen paying for the newAztec Center Student Unionthrough student fees evenbefore the Spring 2010 refer-endum was passed?Yes. In the spring of 2006, studentsvoted in favor of a referendum toincrease student fees by $56 persemester. The fee was implementedin two different phases. In the fall of2006, the first $11 of the fee wasimplemented and the next $45 wasimplemented in the spring of thisyear, according to Cacha.

“The $56 fee increase was notbased on any prior planning of theproject, but rather picked as an arbi-trary number that sounded good tothe Modern Space committee at thetime,” Kashanchi said.

Kashanchi explained that themoney already collected from thepast four years of student fees hasbeen rolled over into bonds to payfor the Modern Space project, how-ever the total dollar amount of thosefees could not be provided.

If the Spring 2010 ModernSpace referendum hadn’tpassed, what would havehappened to the money thatwas already set aside for thenew student union?In the case that the SDSU studentbody voted against the Spring 2010Modern Space referendum, themoney already collected for the proj-ect would have been spent toward a

renovation and facelift of the currentAztec Center Student Union, includ-ing the replacement of much of itsplumbing and air conditioning units.

“Students would have had to con-tinue to use an Aztec Center thatcouldn’t support the currentSDSU population,” Cacha said.“There would be no increase infood venues, no increased energyefficiency and no increase in thenumber of conference rooms tocope with the increase in demandfrom student organizations.”

Why didn’t advertisementsfor the Modern Space refer-endum explicitly state thatstudents were already payingfor the new student unionthrough student fees?Many advertisements, such as thosein The Daily Aztec, only explicitlystate that students will be paying$94 per semester. The ads do notmention that students will be payingan additional $94 on top of the $56they were previously paying towardthe student union — bringing thetotal fees for the Modern Space proj-ect to $150 per semester.

“With every word on an adver-tisement costing more money, wehad to choose what we thought werethe most important things for stu-dents to take away from it (theadvertisement),” Kashanchi said.

However, after speaking with theadvertising department at The DailyAztec, it was discovered that thetotal price of an advertisement iscontingent on its total size, in inch-es, rather than how many words theadvertisement contains.

If students knew they werealready paying $56 persemester toward The NewAztec Center Student Union,would they still have voted infavor of the Modern Spacereferendum last spring?“Yes, we believe students would havestill voted in favor of Modern Spacebecause they were informed in allpresentations and forums that theywere already contributing to thefunds for Modern Space,”Kashanchi said. “Even thoughthey already knew all of this, stu-dents still voted to increase feesfor the project because it wassomething they wanted.”

The Modern Space projecthas been postponed before.Is there a possibility this willhappen again with the cur-rent economic conditions?In the spring of last year, the ModernSpace project came screeching to ahalt because of the recent recessionand the resulting reduced enroll-ment. Because there were fewer stu-dents paying into the ModernSpace project, there was a shortfallin funding. As a result, the ModernSpace committee proposed a feeincrease to the A.S. Council, whichresulted in the referendum thatpassed last spring.

With economic and enrollmentconditions similar to that of one yearago, students’ concerns of future feeincreases are very real. However,Cacha stressed there would be no

further fee increases for theModern Space project.

“There is no chance fees are goingto go up for this project anymore,”Cacha said.

Kashanchi also confirmedthere would not be any further feeincreases.

“We lowballed on budget andenrollment numbers before thespring fee increase was proposed,”Kashanchi said. “We didn’t want tobe in the situation we were in spring2009 because we wanted to go for-ward with the project.”

Because construction on thenew Aztec Student Uniondoesn’t begin until next year,will money from our studentfees be used to maintain thecurrent Aztec Center?With construction set to begin onthe new Aztec Student Union in2011, some concerns arise as towhether money being funneled intothe Modern Space project wouldbe used for the upkeep of the cur-rent Aztec Center until it’sknocked down. Kashanchi andCacha urged that no more moneyis currently planned to be spent onthe current Aztec Center.

“All fee spending has been haltedon the current Aztec Center until theModern Space project begins nextyear,” Cacha said.

A.S. has gone as far as to refuseto replace broken door handlesaround Aztec Center in an attemptto conserve funding for theModern Space project.

“We want to avoid spendingstudents’ money on the currentAztec Center as much as possible,”Cacha said.

SSAARRAAHH GGRR II EECCOOM A N AG I N G E D I TO R

Clearing the air around Modern Space

AANNTTHHOONNYY BBRROONNSSOONNS TA F F W R I T E R

An increase in student fees to fund Modern Space has been voted on twice in the past four years. Students were paying $56 per semester into Modern Space even before the referendum was passed last spring. Courtesy of Associated StudentsFile Photo

&&