UNLV has faced no shortage of adversity over the past few years. From the COVID-19 pandemic requiring an off-campus college experience to last December’s shooting on campus that killed three UNLV staff members, the UNLV community has confronted challenge after challenge.
Following the culmination of the 2023-2024 academic year, UNLV now stands face to face with another problem. Supposedly the 2024-2025 academic year is the last where UNLV’s student government, known as the Consolidated Students of UNLV (CSUN), will be able to fully fund registered student organizations (RSOs), general student resources and scholarships.
CSUN’s proposal to this issue is Senate Bill 54-67 (SB 54-67). In an act to amend the CSUN Constitution, SB 54-67 proposes changing the current NSHE-approved undergraduate credit fee of $1.97 per credit every fiscal year and “increasing the CSUN fee by $1.00 to $2.97 to a budget of $1.91 million for 2025-2026,” according to the bill itself.
In order to get this bill into effect, it has to be passed through a long procedure of checks and balances. This procedure includes putting together a five-person committee inside of CSUN that must meet with the Vice President of Student Affairs office, getting approved through CSUN’s internal affairs department in a majority vote, getting approved by UNLV’s general council, getting sent back to internal affairs for a second round of approval, going to the senate for a two-thirds majority vote and notifying the director of elections 30 days before the fall election, which is on Oct. 9 and 10.
All of these checks and balances have been completed for SB 54-67. Still, the students have to vote on this initiative in the fall election once the bill has passed these safeguards.
“What we did over the summer from May all the way until August was really running the math and talking with everyone,” said UNLV Student Body President Allister Dias. “We ran the numbers and we figured out that if we increase the CSUN fee by only $1, we can actually fund 100% of the RSOs that come to us, we can keep students that rely on us for scholarships funded, we can keep many of the student resources that students enjoy.”
With such an impactful bill being proposed, the topic of which students it would impact the most and how remain at the forefront of the conversation. While not every student may be involved in an RSO, their collegiate experience is still under the impression of CSUN’s impact.
“We have students who are very involved,” said Dias. “Then, of course, you have students who may not be as involved, they may just come to class and go home. Regardless of how involved you are here at UNLV, CSUN still has some kind of influence on your time here at UNLV. For example, if you have classes that have an exam, a midterm, a final or anything of that nature, CSUN helps provide the scantrons and exam booklets for free. We pay approximately $10,000 every single semester to help fund these resources for students to use.”
In the past, CSUN has funded a number of resources for students unable to make ends meet. One example of which would be the UNLV food pantry, where students who are unable to afford food are granted the ability to pick up food for free.
Not only do the authors of the bill hope to restore resources they were able to provide to students through involvement but also those of necessity. Transportation and the accessibility of coming to UNLV’s campus for classes is a task that some students struggle with because of their lack of resources.
Dias continued, “One thing we’re really hoping to do through this initiative if it passes is expand transportation for students. We used to help fund RTC [Regional Transport Commission] permit passes, free rides for students. We had to retract that because CSUN’s budget got less and less effective. I can personally tell you that I’ve got a ton of emails to the CSUN president from students asking about ways that CSUN can help them with their attendance because they can’t afford it.”
According to Dias, RSOs are to be one of the most impacted by the insufficient funds within the upcoming academic years. While the budget for RSOs used to be above $400,000, it has now reached below $350,000.
Prior to Dias’s presidency, 89 RSOs applied for funding. Of those, CSUN was able to support less than half, with this year being even less. Keeping in mind that Fall 2024 brought in the biggest freshman class in UNLV’s history, one may anticipate an expansion of interest in RSOs or students seeking out scholarships and resources.
To get a start on keeping student interests funded, Dias said, “I myself have decided not to take a salary. The CSUN Student Body President position is one of the highest paid undergraduate positions, but because I want to make sure that students have as much resources as they can even if it comes down to the final penny.”
To deduce that this bill was the most effective plan CSUN could propose, Dias along with the CSUN Vice President and Senate President conducted a case study analysis by researching student government fees from major institutions across the United States.
“Reno’s fee is $6.10 per credit,” pointed out Dias. “Of course, there was an option to charge students a matching fee, but my intuition told me that $6.10 is not feasible for students. If you increase [the fee] by exactly $1.00, you have an expansion of the budget up to $700,000, which is enough to keep every RSO funded and enough to keep every scholarship recipient going.”
Right now the only steps that need to be taken for the bill to pass are the student body referendum and then a vote by the Board of Regents.
While many students and UNLV faculty are in support of SB 54-67, there has been opposition expressed. The only CSUN Senate vote opposing SB 54-67 in a majority approval vote of 12-1-0 came from Jordy Viciedo Prado, former Senator for the College of Education.
In his opposition during Public Senate Meeting 54-26 that took place on Aug. 26 at 6 p.m., Prado stated in public comment:
We’ve got here this current financial situation because previous senates were responsible, plain and simple for this. They allow the executives to misuse their funds with little to no accountability. This wasn’t just oversight, it was a clear failure to the job this senate was elected to do, to protect the interest of every student who pays into the system and now we’re being asked not only to trust this system but to hand even more power and more control to it. That’s why from this moment on I will use every paidship I receive from my work at the CSUN to finance a campaign to inform all UNLV students of the real intentions behind this bill that was previously approved.
Five days later, Prado resigned in a mass-sent out email with the subject line “To all undergrad students,” labeling the CSUN Senate as a “group of irresponsible bureaucrats” who “are nothing more than parasites hungry for more.” He asserted that “SB 54-67 is set to finalize this transition to tyranny.”
Another member of CSUN, who chose to remain anonymous, claimed “It makes no difference whether the student body knows of the initiative. We, just as the broader public does, will vote yes for the sake of it; even while not understanding what is being asked.”
With the election nearing in October, Dias urged students to follow CSUN on Instagram @unlvcsun to follow up with educational material that talks about the bill, why it’s important, safeguards behind it, what’s on the table and what’s at stake.
“Be aware that not everything you hear and see is true,” said Dias. “Always take the time to go out and educate yourself and ask the questions that are on your mind. We as your student body representatives are always here in the offices. We’re always working, and we’re always here to answer your questions.”
