Katie Schultz

News Editor

 

The Fee Allocation Committee (FAC) of Associated Student Government (ASG) will decide whether a portion of surplus student fees will help fund the Monfort Human Performance Lab.

The student fees, also known as SCRIF, would help pay for the disposable materials used in lab tests that cannot be used again, like EMGs and electrodes.

ASG President Ryan Hendershot said the SCRIF money that may be used to fund the lab comes from extra student fees that the school already collected from the growth in enrollment. Basically, the school plans for a certain amount of student fees based on the number of students expected to enroll. If more students enroll than planned, the extra student fees go into the SCRIF fund. This means that students would not have to pay an additional fee to help fund the lab.

However, FAC has their concerns giving the lab the go ahead.

“Not all students will use the lab,” Hendershot said. He said that he finds it hard to imagine that every student at Mesa State will use the lab.

Director of the lab, Bill Sands, has different ideas.

“There is a misconception that this lab is only for jocks,” Sands said. “(I want the lab) to pull more from the campus.”

Sands said his main goal isn’t budgetary but to attract more students to the lab. Right now they see about 30 people a day. 

“You learn more by breaking things,” Sands said. “I want it to be chaotic.”

The lab itself has received more attention nationally since it opened. There have even been a few Olympic athletes who used the facility.

But to Sands the most important people to use the lab are students.

Sands said he’d rather use the lab to work with 1,000 students than with one big  name athelete.

The FAC will discuss the use of student fees to fund the lab at their next meeting on April 26 and if passed the proposal will be voted on by ASG, April 28. Then the proposal will be sent to the ASG President’s desk for approval. Community input for both meetings takes place at 6 p.m.