Is having a better place to live really worth the money?

It would appear the Department of Residence believes so.

However, with the renovation of Maple Hall and other construction projects, the department finds itself vastly over budget, needing to cut important services such as Student Security and the Towers Brown route, and charging for previously free services such as air conditioning and summer storage.

All this despite the fact that room and board fees increased about seven percent over last year.

With the current debate over the Brown route in the GSB Senate, let’s take a look at the situation.

If you have ever lived at or visited the Towers, you know that the Brown route is well-used.

Specifically, the Brown route saw 87,449 riders in fiscal year 1995, the year before it was free to Towers residents; last year when it was free it had approximately 397,000 riders.

This does not seem like a service worthy of a $12,000 cut in funding.

Rather, it seems that more of the Department of the Residence budget should be devoted to maintaining Brown route service.

The GSB Senate will vote Wednesday night on a proposal that would partially fund the Brown route from the GSB Transit Trust Fund.

Essentially, GSB is being asked to solve a problem brought on by the Department of Residence.

In no way, shape or form should GSB be faulted for the Brown route situation, since it is not its responsibility to offer assistance to university departments having budgetary problems.

Although neither of us have degrees in accounting or management, it does not take a degree to realize that the Department of Residence is going to continue to experience the same budgetary problems in the future.

According to its “Master Plan,” there will always be a construction or renovation project in progress.

Therefore, there will always be decreased levels of residents and income.

Something here will have to change; either the Department of Residence will have to re-evaluate their plans, or there will be further large increases in room and board and further decreases in services offered.

Jeremy Williams

Senior

Pre-business

Christian Edmiston

Graduate student

Economics