by Jackie Smith and Brian Kaminsky

We were very glad to see that our presentation regarding technology improvements at the Feb. 25 USG meeting was included in Daily Egyptian Feb. 27. However, we feel the article did not accurately reflect what took place during the presentation. The information included in the article was misleading and needs to be clarified for the student body.

Technology is an extremely important issue on this campus and students must be able to have input on all aspects of its development. Our intent was to inform students and get feedback, not to suggest and persuade on any fee issue, as the article suggested.

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First of all, we did not propose that a referendum be added to the USG ballot for the April 15 elections concerning the implementation of a technology fee. In fact, the purpose of our presentation was to discuss the priorities and goals for technology on campus and the ways in which we might be able to attain those priorities and goals. A question was raised regarding how technology improvements might be funded. We laid out the various options that the Computer Advisory Committee has researched. A technology fee is an option that the other colleges in Illinois have used to fund technology improvements. However, it is only one of several options that we presented and should have been presented as such in the DE article.

Due to the magnitude of this issue, even though a technology fee has only been discussed by the Computer Advisory Committee, we felt that this issue should be taken to the student leaders immediately. This will ensure that a technology fee-related issue will not come as a surprise to students should it be necessary to discuss it further in the future. We also strongly believe that the students must know the instrumental provisions that were put in place by other universities to protect the student’s interests, such as an advisory board composed of students to oversee the allocation of this money to student-computing facilities only.

Secondly, it is the job of the administration, and not the Computer Advisory Committee, to determine where to get funds to support technology projects. As in any case, it is our firm position that, money will be extracted from the University budget and other external dollars before any fee is ever put into place.

The focus on computing at this point should be on where and how we are going to improve our technology on campus in order to increase the value of our degrees and remain competitive with other universities. As students members of this committee, we feel that we are responsible for bringing all the information we receive to the student body and will continue to do so.

This issue is significant to the future of SIUC and has to be given the full attention it deserve. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to clarify this project.

USG chief of staff, Computer Advisory Committee member

Computer Advisory Committee member

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