Faculty Senate heard a proposal on Tuesday which puts forth the idea of creating a student fee, which would give Eastern students free access to all shows at the Doudna Fine Arts Center and also provide additional funding to upkeep of facilities.

The proposed fee was discussed internally by the Doudna community and was first proposed by Dennis Malak, director of operations at Doudna, and Dan Crews, director of programming, publicity and promotion at Doudna.

Nicholas Shaw, a professor in Eastern’s theatre department, said he hopes to one day see the fee at Eastern.

“I think that we have a fantastic fine arts center; we have a lot of great student ensembles that use it, a lot of great student theatrical productions, a lot of great student artwork that is being presented,” Shaw said. “It is sort of one of the jewels of our campus; all of the admissions days go through Doudna, incoming students visit Doudna, and so I think we need to make sure that we keep Doudna in good working order and keep trying to push it toward that cutting edge. Without the funds to do that, I don’t know that we can continue for that building to be the jewel that it is.”

Shaw said the fee does face obstacles in becoming a reality and that talks are in early stages right now.

Any fee must be approved by Eastern’s Student Senate, university President David Glassman and the Board of Trustees.

JJ Bullock can be reached at 581-2812 or jpbullock@eiu.edu.