Cleaning Fees On Hold

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Student organizations may face cleaning fees for Tuesday and Thursday events next quarter.

Registered student organizations and departments found themselves facing a new fee attached to event reservations to begin the school year.

For all Tuesday and Thursday classroom reservations, signers were told there would be a “custodial services event fee” to go along with the booking, ranging from $37 to $148 depending on the size of the room (small classroom to lecture hall).

Facilities Management said the cleaning fees would help cover for costs as the department turned toward insourcing its employees and not using custodial contractors any longer.

Administrative Analyst Karen L. Seeley said the cost of the insourcing was over $1 million in benefits and equipment costs. The custodial staff would only provide regularly scheduled cleaning services on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

After deliberations with student representatives and Student Life and Leadership staff, Facilities Management agreed to not charge student organizations and departments any fees to use classrooms. However, this agreement does not carry past the Fall quarter, as a final agreement on the custodial fees has not been reached for the Winter and Spring quarters.

According to the Simple Navigational Administrative Portal (SNAP) website, the custodial services event fees for the fiscal year of 2011-2012 still show the fees for Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the rates at $37, $55.50 and $148 for small, medium and large/lecture hall classrooms, respectively.

The site also details a $55.50 restroom cleaning fee that would be added to the room cleaning fee.

Sherwynn Umali, the Co-Director of Campus Organizations in Student Life and Leadership, said these fees would be a “drop in the bucket” toward covering their expenses.

The fees could also lead to students using classrooms without properly reserving them, she said, which could lead to liability issues.

ASUCI President Traci Ishigo explained the concerns from students, as well as preparing a  collective response from the student body.

“The responses I have received from [individual] campus orgs is of extreme concern,” she said. “We hope to organize a collective response so that we can talk about how [the fees are] problematic [for students] and how there was no student input involved.

“The original proposal only includes Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we’re not accounting for the cost of classes creating part of the mess in classrooms, and that it’s not just clubs and organizations,” Ishigo said.

Umali said a collective student response would help the administration understand the issues more clearly and move forward in finding a solution that benefits both sides.