| Joplin - A new group is now meeting on the campus of Missouri Southern State University. The group is comprised of students who are disenchanted with the new $150 student recreation center fee that will take effect in the fall of 2008, a fee that precedes an $8 per credit hour increase recently approved.
What began as a Facebook group has now become a proactive group of students who meet weekly on campus. Students from every major and classification have joined the group that has swelled to 137 members and growing steadily.
Students Opposed to Recreation center Fee (SORF) are currently gathering signatures to petition the MSSU president and Board of Governors to significantly reduce or eliminate the $150 fee. In fact, they received over 200 signatures for the petition in just one week.
Beginning with the fall 2008 semester, MSSU's Board of Governors voted to include a $150 recreation center fee in the tuition costs of every full time student and $75 fee for every part time student, with each student incurring the charge regardless, of whether they plan to use the facility and with juniors and seniors not even being privy to the facility's use.
SORF members include students who cannot afford the extra fee, students who think MSSU should update other buildings first before constructing a new one, juniors and seniors who do not want to pay for something they will never even see, nursing students upset that their department has to move across campus to the basement of the Anderson Mills Criminal Justice Center, and students who simply do not feel the need for a recreation center.
Two main reasons mostly cited by students who choose MSSU over other institutions are that it is local and relatively inexpensive. Raising tuition and charging exorbitant fees will only drive away prospective and current students, they've said.
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