University officials did not spend student general fee money in accordance with the recommendations of a student committee formed to provide input on how to use those funds, records show.

The committee, a group of eight students and a faculty member formed in February, suggested a reduction of more than $500,000 to the athletics department and increased funding to Counseling and Psychological Services and to Arts for Ohio, a program that allows students to attend College of Fine Arts events for free.

But Ohio University’s Budget Planning Council chose to increase the athletics budget with about $600,000 of general fee money, awarding no extra general fee cash to the arts program or to Counseling and Psychological Services.

“I have reached a point where the recommendations are dead on arrival,” said Dominic Barbato, Graduate Student Senate president and a member of Budget Planning Council. “I’m not surprised with the outcome, because essential services are getting cut and athletics will never be subjected to one.”

Not enough funds

The general fee, charged to all undergraduate students, nets about $35.2 million in revenue for the university. Each student enrolled in 11 to 20 credit hours on the Athens campus pays $591 per quarter.

Historically, OU has collected students’ tuition and general fees, combined them into a general fund and not tracked precisely where the money went. Last school year, in an effort to increase shared governance, OU officials decided to change that — tracking for the first time how much general fee money each department received and creating the Student General Fee Advisory Committee to recommend how to allocate that money.

William Decatur, vice president for Finance and Administration and co-chair of Budget Planning Council, said if the council had implemented the student committee’s recommendations, the athletics department would have faced a $1 million deficit. Even after the cutting of four varsity sports last year, he said, the department faced a half-million dollar deficit and already was down to the Division I minimum number of teams.

Officials were more receptive to funding for Arts for Ohio and Counseling and Psychological Services but couldn’t find the resources in the general fee, Decatur said.

Arts for Ohio was funded with $300,000 of one-time money from the executive vice president and provost’s office, and Counseling and Psychological Services received $175,000 from institutional reserves instead of general fee dollars. The student committee had recommended general fee funding of $135,000 to Counseling and Psychological Services and $339,811 to establish Arts for Ohio.

Kept in the dark

Chris Diehl, Student Senate Academic Affairs commissioner and a member of the general fee committee, said he was pleased that Arts for Ohio and Counseling and Psychological Services received funding — even if that funding didn’t come from general fee money.

But he and other student leaders said they couldn’t understand why the athletics department received more money when they recommended a cut, and they said the work of the committee was plagued by poor communication between it and Budget Planning Council.

The students did not know how general fee money had been spent until contacted by The Post.

“The failure of notifying us of any decisions constitutes a fairly egregious error and a break of shared governance,” said Patrick Heery, co-chair of the student committee. “The procedure we agreed to before the recommendations went to the Board of Trustees was we would be included in the recommendations, but no dialogue took place.”

Both students and administrators attributed the lack of communication to the fact that the student committee was in its first year and that OU had never previously kept records on how general fee money was spent. Because no general fee breakdown existed before last year, the committee received multiple updated versions of one as the year progressed.

“This year hopefully we won’t get six different drafts of the general fee breakdown throughout the year,” Diehl said. “Ideally the version we have right now will be consistent throughout the process.”

Similarly, university officials were left to wonder how much funding assistance they would get from state government as legislators and Gov. Ted Strickland grappled with how to cap tuition increases and still adequately fund public colleges across the state.

“Since we’re in the second year of the state budget, we know what state funding is, we know what the fee caps are and (Budget Planning Council) is already looking at all key variables that drive our budget,” Decatur said.

'Work itself out' 

Kent Smith, vice president for Student Affairs and advisor to the general fee committee, said he was “not sure” how he felt about the athletics department receiving more money against the recommendations of the student committee, but he was glad there was at least a discussion about how students’ money should be spent.

“There wasn’t additional money to allocate,” he said. “The difficulty is that athletics already got cut and the recommendations based on cutting athletics even farther.”

Student leaders expressed optimism that this year’s recommendations, which will be presented to Budget Planning Council in May, will be more effective.

“I think a lot of that will work itself out,” Diehl said. “I think a lot of the units now will be more aware of what’s going on and be better prepared to present.”