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Tuition to Jump in Spring, again in Fall
Jason Palmer | Staff Reporter

The third local tuition increase since the Spring 2003 semester could come as quickly as January, according to MSU President Jesse Rogers.
Rogers addressed the Student Government Association Tuesday night, spreading the bad news.
Rogers will present two proposals to the Board of Regents at its Nov. 4 meeting.
Both versions will increase the local tuition cost from $45 per credit hour to $53 per credit hour, an $8 increase, for the spring semester.
One version then will add an additional $13 per credit hour in Fall 2005 with no additional increase in Spring 2006.
The second proposal increases by $8 per credit hour in Fall 2005 and increases again by $8 in Spring 2006.
The BOR will ultimately decide which proposal will help MSU the most with the budget situation the school faces next year.
Either way, the increase is noticeably larger than in years past.
To offset the growing budget problem, MSU increased tuition from $34 per credit hour to $39 per credit hour in Fall 2003 and again to $45 per credit hour for Spring 2004.
The increase would act as a preventative medicine in planning for next year’s school budget and the bi-annual state budget’s general revenue appropriation to the university.
“The Interim House/Senate Study Committee told us there is no way we’ll be brought back to the funding level we were at,” Rogers said, referring to the February 2003 budget cuts where the state asked for $1.21 million back from MSU.
The state then cut funding from the general revenue appropriation by $4 million, putting the MSU coffers in a bind.
The tuition increase would allow MSU to give another round of faculty raises, add more faculty to service the growing student population and allow updates to the library.
“We’re talking about dollars you pay for the quality of your education,” Rogers said. “We can’t go another year without raises or we are going to be non-competitive in hiring faculty.”
The state’s decision whether or not to give more money won’t come until late May 2005, near the end of the legislative session. That’s too long to wait, according to Rogers.
“I’m not willing to take a chance on waiting for (the legislators),” Rogers said. “We’ve basically been told ‘no’.”
If the decision to raise tuition is delayed and the state does not allocate more appropriations, MSU would be forced to raise tuition (to make up for the lost revenue) after many students have already registered for the fall semester.
That would mean students would still owe money if they have already paid for the fall.
“We have to decide right now how much we want to increase revenue,” Rogers said. “I don’t think we can avoid it.”
The Financial Aid Office told Rogers that any student who receives aid can apply for a repackaged amount to cover the additional cost of the spring increase.
Rogers said he was very hesitant to move ahead with the Spring increase if students receiving aid could not make up the difference on their own.
Rogers said a state law requires any college with local tuition more than $45 per credit hour to put 20 percent of the revenue generated into the financial aid and scholarship fund.
In essence, more money will be available for students who need help if the increase is approved by the BOR.
Whichever proposal the BOR decides upon, the students at MSU will have to continue bearing the brunt of the economic problems in the state and the lack of revenue support from the government for at least the next two years. After that, if the economy is back to the level it was four years ago, the state may be able to curb the rising costs by raising the revenue stream back up, Rogers said.
“If at some point the state doesn’t help, I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he said. “(The state) must start putting money back into higher education.”



Senate gives Nod to Tuition Increase
Shanice Curry | Staff Reporter

The Student Senate voted unanimously to support President Jesse Rogers as he presents a tuition increase proposal to the Board of Regents.
This tuition increase has become necessary because the state has cut funding for higher education, according to Rogers.  His goal is to maintain the same standard of education that MSU has established.
“We need to balance what you pay with the quality that is reasonable,” Rogers said.
These tuition increases will primarily go toward financial aid and faculty, Rogers said.
There are two possible scenarios for the future increases. The first would involve three increases of $8 a semester hour for each of the next three semesters. The second scenario would involve two increases: one of $8 per semester hour in spring 2005 and another of $13 per semester hour in fall 2005.
Rogers promised if the second scenario of an $8 then a $13 increase passes at the Nov. 2 Board of Regents meeting, there would be no more increases for at least two years.
Although the Senate did not vote on a specific scenario, it voiced its support for Rogers’s petition.
Some senators did voice some concerns such as the tuition increase being used for the new recreation center or the new business building.  Rogers explained the funds for the business building came from a different category of funding. The recreation center funding would be paid for through a fee approved only by a student vote.
“(The recreation center) is not a part of this.  It is paid for exclusively by students,“ Rogers said. “I wish the two hadn’t come up at the same time.”
Students were concerned about which category of students would be affected by the increase. Rogers said that while graduate students would be affected, out-of-state students and international students would not, because out of state and international tuition is regulated by the state.
In other business, Student Government President Abdel Aitroua announced changes in the university drop day.
If a student does not pay for tuition before the fourth day of class, the university must drop him or her. The balance must be paid within $250. This is a change from previous years’ maximum balance of $500.
A reinstatement fee of $50 will also be instituted.
“Other schools don’t really have the reinstatement fee, but they ask students to pay out-of-state tuition because after that day the university loses reimbursement from the state,” Rogers said.
The Senate voted on a new Parliamentarian. Of two nominees, Landon Rung was appointed the position.
Along with the voting, it was also announced that due to a shortage of planning time, the Halloween in the Streets that SGA was planning to sponsor will not be held this year.
The Student Government meeting for Nov. 2 has been rescheduled for Nov. 9 because the date coincides with the presidential election. 


Sweet Songs of the Past: Ex-Students share music building Memories
Nicole Ford | Staff Reporter

The last thing Holly Irby expected to see as she left a faculty recital at Akin Auditorium on Oct. 12 was the rubble of what was once the music building.
Irby was a student at MSU from fall 1970 to summer 1977 when she completed her master’s degree in music. Now secretary for the Music Department, she was surprised to learn the building would be torn down to make way for a new facility for the College of Business. 
She couldn’t believe the building that held so many memories for her had been bulldozed so soon. 
“It was the first time I knew it was gone,” Irby said.  “I was seriously sad because I immediately thought of all the emotions, and friends connected to them.  I remembered recitals and how notes on a page would turn into a performance.”
Some of Irby’s strongest memories are of the camaraderie she shared with fellow students, and of the teaching she received inside the building.
“I have friendships from back then that exist to this day,” Irby said.  “There was outstanding teaching and support.”
 Irby had such strong emotional ties with the building that she dug a brick from the rubble.  The brick now sits on the floor of her car.
“I’m a sentimental female,” she said.  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.  Maybe one day I’ll clean it up and put some felt on the bottom of it and make it a doorstop, I don’t know.  I just wanted to have it.”
The music program is mainly housed in a wing of the Fain Fine Arts building, and Irby noted that many things once done in the music building are now done at Fain.
Irby sent an e-mail out to other former MSU students, asking them to share their memories. 
Ricky Tims, a piano major in the mid-’70s, vividly remembers one confrontation on the stairs.
“I once squashed a big ol’ spider on the stairs but didn’t realize she was carrying her babies, so suddenly there were a million tiny arachnids fleeing in every direction.  An Indian war dance followed, and I had no idea I knew how to do that,” Tims said.
Irby also remembers that event and its fallout.
“That spider’s huge, dried-up corpse remained in the top drawer of a desk in one of the practice rooms for years,” Irby said.  “It’s probably still there, wherever that desk is now.”
Irby said that many students smoked in the halls and in public buildings in the ’70s, a practice that it was widely accepted. 
“It was way before not smoking in public,” Irby said.  “Students would smoke in the performance rooms.  There would be cigarette burns on the piano where students would set their cigarettes down and forget about them.”
Arthur Smith, a piano performance major who completed his bachelor’s in 1975 and his master’s in 1979, wrote about an “old-timey drink machine that took dimes and sold Grapette soda” and that “you would lift the lid like on a deep freeze and then you had to ratchet the bottle around the maze to pull it out.”
Irby recalled that the “big, austere” Coke machine once sported a sign saying “Win a coke, 25 cents a chance.”
Irby and many other students remember long hours spent in the practice rooms, which were not always comfortable places.
“Sometimes the air conditioning or heating turned off.  One time I went in to practice during Christmas break and the thermostat said it was below 50 degrees,” Irby recalled.
During the spring and fall, the practice room windows would be opened to let in the breezes, Irby said.
“The windows wouldn’t stay up, so we had to prop them open with a big piece of wood,” Irby said.  “Students would be playing Frisbee on the quadrangle.  Sometimes our friends were out there, and we’d ask them to come up to listen to a new piece we were working on.  We wanted to try it on someone not scary first.”
Susan Cusenbary, adjunct instructor, earned her bachelor’s in music education in 1977 and her master’s in 1979.
“I remember Music History with Steve Tonkinson.  During one lecture, his quiet voice was gradually overpowered by a mower going right under his window.  He continued to move his lips, and after the mower passed, he said ‘and that’s what you should do in case of a bomb.’”
Irby, and many other former students, hold fond memories of the building that is now nothing more than rubble.
“They are the very best memories of my life, and the most fantastic things I’ve ever learned,” Irby said.



Ready to Rumba? Latin dance classes offered in Clark Student Center
Alexandria Vallarreal | For the Wichitan

Ever get the urge to Cha-Cha-Cha?
For the first time, Latin dance classes are being offered in the Clark Student Center.  Classes are on Fridays and Saturdays at 6 p.m. in the Kiowa Room with instructor Carla Sylvester.  Sylvester’s 90-minute classes last one semester and cost $25.  A partner is not required and the classes are open to everyone. Thirty people are currently registered for the classes.
Sylvester has taught the Salsa and plans on teaching the Meringue, Rumba and Cha-Cha.
“They are all easy to teach. The Cha-Cha-Cha is the easiest,” said Sylvester.
Most of the students in the class pick up the dances very quickly. 
 “If you’re not Hispanic it’s a great cultural experience and lots of fun,” said Desiree Matthew.
If demand continues to grow, Sylvester plans to offer the non-credit classes during the upcoming spring semester as well.
 “They’re just for fun,” she said.
  She started the classes last semester in a clubhouse at the Colony Park apartment complex.  The great number of people who showed interest in the classes prompted Sylvester to work together with the Student Government Association in order to bring the classes to campus. Sylvester will receive some help instructing the classes from one of the members of the Student Government Association.
Sylvester, a senior finance major from Grenada, started dancing and teaching classes three years ago. She attended dance classes in Trinidad and Grenada. 
Her two dance instructors were British, so she knows a more traditional version of the Latin dances.  Sylvester was instructed in jazz, Latin and contemporary dance styles.  After only a year of taking lessons, one of Sylvester’s teachers decided she was ready to start teaching classes of her own.
Out of all the different dances Sylvester knows, the Salsa is her favorite. Dancing is definitely a fun hobby for her.  In the future, she would like to learn more about the tango and a Cuban-style Salsa.   For now, however, she is too busy to take new lessons herself. 
 “There’s nothing really happening around here, that’s why I started the Latin dance classes,” she said. 
Sylvester encourages everyone to try the classes and have fun learning something new.