The Student General Fee Advisory Committee presented its recommendations — including an almost 5 percent proposed cut to the Athletics Department — to the Budget Planning Council on Friday.

Early impressions were that the student committee’s proposal received respect, though no decisions were made on changes. BPC co-chairs Kathy Krendl, executive vice president and provost, and William Decatur, vice president for Finance and Administration, were unavailable for comment.

“I think they listened to it very well,” said Dominic Barbato, Graduate Student Senate president and BPC member. “It’s just the changes they proposed were very radical and there’s still a lot more discussions that need to be done about what our priorities for this general fee are.”

Patrick Heery, Student Senate’s Academic Affairs commissioner and co-chair of the general fee committee, presented the proposed allocations and answered questions before being asked to leave so BPC members could discuss the recommendations in private.

“I am a little worried (BPC’s changes) might be significantly different than what we’re recommending, but of course I don’t know that,” he said. “From what I do understand, they’re postponing the decision on this because they feel it’s such a complex issue.”

BPC scheduled an extra meeting Friday to continue the discussions, though there is no timetable for a decision, said Sally Linder, university spokeswoman.

“They just took a real first, general look at what the recommendations were,” she said. “As far as anybody saying ‘we will or we won’t,’ or ‘we’ll get somewhere with that,’ that really didn’t occur.”

BPC is expected to present the Board of Trustees with a finalized budget at its June meeting.

“It’s a really big reallocation of money and I think the sense from BPC is just that we need to talk about it a lot more,” Barbato said.Cut athletic support

The general fee committee’s largest cut occurred in athletics — a loss of more than $500,000.

“There were a lot of concerns and reservation about our recommendation, particularly with athletics and if they could sustain the cuts,” Heery said. “Our committee was certainly well aware of those implications, but we were more concerned with trying to represent student interest, since it is in fact our money.”

Heery said the committee emphasized the need for re-evaluation of the funding priorities, focusing on proportionality

and fairness.

Most of the money the committee recommended taking away from athletics would go to Counseling and Psychological Services and Arts for Ohio, a program that would allow students to attend theater and arts events for free.

“We have so many needs to be covered by this general fee pool,” Barbato said. “We just need to have more discussions on where our priorities are for that specific money.”