I’m writing this letter because I believe that the students at Iowa State have a right to know what is going on regarding the decision whether to increase student fees in order to fund and address the deferred maintenance issues in the Memorial Union.

Although the particular resolution brought before the Iowa State senate last Wednesday has been tabled indefinitely, Iowa State Student Government plans to revisit this issue again and propose a new resolution after students are given a chance to be more educated on the subject. I do truly believe that Student Gov is trying its best to make everyone happy in this tough situation.

That being said, I still stand by everything that I said at Wednesday’s senate meeting. Even more so now that I have read the “Report of the Resource Management Model Review Committee” from May 2012. In this report, within the first page, the committee “Suggests significant increases in both the Institutional Excellence Fund (IEF) and the Deferred Maintenance Fund (DMF).”

In section “9.1 Deferred Maintenance” of this report, the committee also states that:

“The amount budgeted for building repairs for FY2011–2012 at ISU was $2.5 million. This represents approximately 0.08 percent of the almost $3 billion replacement value of the university’s general educational facilities. According to national standards, this percentage should, at a minimum, be equal to 1 percent of the replacement value of the facilities to prevent their further deterioration (or $30 million).”

And also that:

“The entry in the Deferred Maintenance column for Fall 2011 of $247.1 Million implies that by not spending the $30 Million a year for many years, the deficit has built up to that level. It is also clear that this deficit in increasing over time as ISU continues to spend well less than recommended amounts.”

This means that the university has known that these issues have been growing and that they weren’t allocating even 10 percent of the proper amount of funds necessary to simply keep the buildings at Iowa State University in operating condition. This includes the Memorial Union, which has not been under student regulation for nearly 30 years.

So the idea that students should be footing the bill for these deferred maintenance costs for the Iowa State University Memorial Union is just absurd, especially knowing that the university was aware that it was not putting the proper funds into not just fixing these issues but making sure the costs of these issues didn’t continue to increase exponentially, which is what it has done.