Any time large amounts of money are involved in a controversial matter, everyone affected by the transaction has a right to know everything about it — including the other options for its spending.

The Department of Residence handles a lot of money at Iowa State, and several budget changes made last spring raised the eyebrows of many students who didn’t understand why the changes occurred.

The department cut funding for Student Security from $165,000 to $60,000, changing security officers’ hours from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m., according to the Daily.

Many students felt the department was underestimating the amount of protection residence halls need, but residence officials said studies showed the most activity occurs between the earlier hours of the shift.

On March 11, the Inter-Residence Hall Association passed a resolution to ask the residence department to re-evaluate its decision to cut Student Security funding.

But last year’s IRHA President Ben Chamberlain vetoed the bill because he felt the issue needed to be examined in more detail, according to the Daily.

Some students also criticized the residence halls “Master Plan,” created by residence department director Randy Alexander, which involves extensive reconstruction of the halls, converting them into suites and apartment-style accommodations.

Alexander said students are not happy with the way the dorms are, and in order to pay for improvements, the Board of Regents raised tuition more than usual.

Maple Hall was the first step in the six-year project, which cost $13 million of the plan’s total $105 million price tag — and that amount only covers the first three years.

These and other department initiatives have snowballed, especially in the eyes of IRHA leaders. Tonight, several members of both IRHA and the Government of the Student Body will present a resolution to the GSB senate to do the in-depth analyzation of department spending Chamberlain wanted months ago.

The resolution states its mission is to “address the needs and concerns of the students of Iowa State University pursuant to the fee structure and services provided by the Department of Residence,” according to Senate Resolution #99-003R.

The committee would be composed of 10 GSB senators, six IRHA members and an individual from each residence hall association: Towers, Richardson Court and Union Drive.

Jonathon Weaver, TRA senator, will chair the committee. Friday he told the Daily that students living in the residence halls are, “to say the least, unhappy,” but not necessarily because they don’t like the dorms — they don’t like having to pay for improvements they’ll never see.

Alexander told the Daily last spring that students don’t like dorms and requested more apartment-style and suite-style living. That may very well be true, but that doesn’t mean the university needs to appease those desires.

Most people want what they can’t have, but that’s the point — they can’t have it. If somebody sent me a survey asking what kind of car I would like to drive, I wouldn’t fill in the little “1989 Ford Taurus” circle. I’d probably choose something new and expensive — that doesn’t mean my wants will materialize.

The recent CyRide Brown Route controversy acted as the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, provoking student leaders to invite Alexander to both the IRHA meeting last Thursday and the GSB meeting tonight to field questions regarding residence department spending as a whole.

Although the GSB senate preserved the Brown Route’s current schedule by allocating about $15,000 to CyRide from the bus system’s own contingency fund, senators still are angry the issue ever had to come before GSB and probably will have some complaints for him at the meeting.

The rationale Alexander and other residence department officials have given for their budget cuts, or “re-prioritization,” as Alexander called it at Thursday’s IRHA meeting, is far from acceptable.

Everything isn’t adding up, and students finally have taken the initiative to do the math themselves.

According to the GSB resolution, aspects of residence department spending the committee would examine include:

* The effectiveness of the department’s budgeting priorities.

* The underlying causes for the changes in the fee structure and services provided by the department.

* The level of service provided by the department compared to other regent universities with respect to fee structure.

* The necessity and effectiveness of the Master Plan and its pertinence to current at future ISU students.

With this information, the committee plans to make a report of its findings and any recommendations it might have to present to GSB and IRHA.

The student review committee most likely will not be able to dig up the kind of dirt on the Department of Residence that members are hoping to find, but simply forming the committee and letting the department know we mean business is enough to show that students are a force to be reckoned with.

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Carrie Tett is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Ames. She is news editor and beat coordinator for the Daily.