The student senate voted Wednesday to increase the campus improvement fee to support the construction of a new Physical Sciences building.

However, input from a former student body president about the fee’s origins may prove to be a challenge to President Bill Perry’s proposal.

Sean Anderson, a former student body president, contacted current student body president Michelle Murphy when he heard about the potential fee increase.

Anderson advised Murphy and senate members to turn down the proposal because he said the campus improvement fee was originally created by a senate member for the direct benefit of the student body.

Anderson, who served from 2006-2007, said the administration should have no authority over the fee, whether proposing changes or planning how to spend the student-provided money.

“It should be known that if it’s a student fee, it should be student-led,” Anderson said. “It shouldn’t be this sum to pay toward the university on top of paying tuition.”

Anderson said the campus improvement fee has been previously used for projects such as improving the food court in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union, as well as the renovation of 7th Street Underground in 2005.

In the past, funds from the campus improvement fee were also used to pay for portions of the Doudna Fine Arts Center construction, the new boiler for the steam plant and repairs following the fire at Blair Hall.

“If students had an idea and they needed money, well, here’s this fee that they created,” Anderson said.

He also said that he is unsure of the year the campus improvement fee went into effect, but Dan Nadler, vice president for student affairs, estimated the fee was implemented approximately seven years ago.

Regardless of the date, Anderson maintains that the administration lacks the right to exert control over the fee as it is composed of money provided by the student body.

“That would be like the administration telling students where their student money will go,” Anderson said. “That would be like if President Perry wanted to take the concert fee and use the money to paint Old Main.”

Murphy, upon conducting further research after hearing Anderson’s concerns, decided that the fee increase, while controversial, is a necessary evil to be encountered on the road to renovating Eastern by constructing a new Physical Sciences building.

She said a science building is likely the most expensive structure to build, as it not only requires classrooms, but laboratories and costly equipment as well.

“You could spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a science building and do the state-of-the-art deal, and what we’re doing, by comparative analysis, is, what I think, a pretty modest proposal,” Murphy said. “It’s a lot of money, but the majority is not being paid out of the students’ pockets.”

Murphy said the only student funds that will go toward the new building are those provided by the increase, not the entire campus improvement fee. The increase will pay for about one-third of the entire project. The rest of the fee will still be dedicated to general upkeep of the university, Murphy said.

“I’d be against it if we were funding the whole job, because I’d hate to see all that money go toward one thing,” Murphy said.

Murphy said that if passed by the BOT, the university would still have to campaign for the millions of dollars that the fee increase will not cover.

“We’re going to have to figure out a way, or we’re going to have to turn the lights off and shut the doors and say, ‘We’re not going to have science anymore,’ and God forbid we actually have to do something like that,” Murphy said. “We can talk about it for 10 years, and then it’ll either be too late, or it’ll be in such bad condition that we’ll have ruined our reputation in that department and nobody will want to come here for science.”

The proposal ultimately passed by a vote of 23-3-1 and awaits the final vote by the Board of Trustees, tentatively scheduled for April 26.

Erica Whelan can be reached at 581-7942 or elwhelan@eiu.edu