Author: Maha Razzaki

The Student Fee Committee has now received all of the initial requests from student groups and departments for their 2009-10 budgets and the total amount requested is almost $6 million more than the 2008-09 requests.

Portland State’s Student Fee Committee has made cuts to the athletic department’s budget in hopes that the department would be more committed to a program that would help student-athletes develop off the field. The reason the SFC gave for the cuts was because members were concerned with the lack of department programming that addressed student-athletes’ development outside of athletics. The cuts would not affect student-related positions, wages, athletic scholarships or graduate assistants.

The Student Fee Committee put the Student Activities and Leadership Program’s 2009-10 budget on reserve, indicating that SALP will most likely have to implement some changes before presenting their budget request again.

Students gathered in the Woman’s Resource Center living room last night for an event about the role of race in Ecuador. Part of the Women’s Resource Center’s Faculty Favorite Lecture series, and cosponsored by the Multicultural Resource Center, the idea for the lecture came from Ethan Johnson, a PSU Black Studies professor.

Andrea Ogsten, of Portland State’s Student Legal and Mediation Services, has been getting a lot of complaints from students regarding nonrefundable fees they were charged when entering into a rental agreement. The problem? The fees landlords are charging are often excessive, Ogsten said.

As a faculty led panel discussion called “Whither Our Economy?” began on Tuesday evening, students and community residents packed a Smith Memorial Student Union room in an attempt to fully understand the economic crisis. Each professor delivered a 10-minute speech accompanied by Power Point slides to create clear definitions and explanations for the students and was later followed by a question and answer session.