Your health is important. You want to live a long time, right? So would you let the University throw about $45 million into its recreational services in order to get yet another place to work out, swim, run and play basketball on campus? Not sure yet?

Well, here’s the plan. The department of recreational services has proposed a massive project that would include an overhaul of the classic State Gym, minor renovations to Beyer Hall, resurfacing of intramural fields, and the prize of the bunch, an “addition” to State Gym which would basically be Lied West.

The new facility would include three basketball courts, a four-lane jogging track, 16,000 square feet of fitness and free weight areas, a multi-purpose room, a climbing wall, and a leisure pool fit for a five-star resort.

Now before you get antsy, consider the following. This project is not cheap. While it is apparent that I have mastered the obvious, it is important to realize the undertaking that is being proposed here: a $45 million project that will be partly student-funded.

According to the Cannon Design Consultant Campus Recreation Facility Feasibility Study released in February of last year, which outlines the propositions at hand, it is claimed that “students have repeatedly provided a strong message to the University that they are willing to support an increase in student fees to secure modern recreation facilities that are in high demand.”

While some students may have voiced support for a project like this, I don’t think many of them realize the unfairness of Iowa State’s student fee payment plan.

According to the feasibility study, the project will run about $45 million, but the university itself can only provide about $31 million of that – much of which is out of our own pockets as it is. So the rest of that has to be made up by donations, non-student user fees and yet another student fee.

Now I don’t know about you, but student fees like to sneak up on me like snakes on a plane. As an engineer, lab fees, computer fees and other random requirements are thrown onto my U-Bill without even a shred of explanation or thought, and usually paid off without much thought either.

I’ve pretty much accepted that in some way or another this university could very well be the financial death of me. And as an out-of-state student, it’s even worse (yeah, don’t feel sorry for me though, I did this to myself).

So it should be at least somewhat reasonable for me to object to the university’s unforgivably unfair plan to add yet another student fee as soon as construction starts tentatively in 2009.

The current plans calls for two years of $20 per semester in fees and then $107 per semester after that until the buildings are paid off. This means that some students will be paying for this new facility and renovations but won’t even be around to use it.

Sure, $20 a semester is only a hair of a raise, but the principle of the matter is that students who are not going to be around at the projected completion date of 2011 should not be forced to pay for any of it, and there is nothing in the report to indicate that current sophomores and juniors will not be relieved of this fee.

Not to mention the proposed traffic and parking study that will be conducted will most likely move the completion date back even further, which means that it is very possible that hardly any of Iowa State’s undergraduates – i.e. those voting for this expansion in February – will actually be able to utilize the finished spaces.

Don’t get me wrong, there are few things more important than keeping in shape. Americans could really use as many recreational facilities as possible, and I am in favor of a lot of these renovations.

But the university needs to realize what is necessary and what is fair. Not only is the proposed facility fairly over the top with its leisure pool, hot tub and climbing wall, but to stick students who won’t even be here at its completion with the cost is utterly absurd.

– Andrew Gionnette is a senior in mechanical engineering from Chanhassen, Minn.