Recently, Penn State administrators have proposed yet another fee to impose on both University Park and Commonwealth Campus students.

Let's recap what students here at University Park already pay: there's tuition, housing fees, textbook fees, meal plan fees and now, if Assistant Vice President Stan Latta gets his wish, a $100 per semester facilities fee that students barely have a voice in allocating.

This fee would more than double its sister fee, the student activity fee. Already hefty at $68 per semester, this charge will see another $6 tacked on to it in the fall, when the proposed facilities fee may go into effect.

If big-spending student groups like the University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA) head into their second semesters without a concrete budget formulated and made public, how can the university ask for more money when the funds it's already pulling out of students' pockets are inefficiently distributed? There is a reason Penn State hires accountants -- the distribution of the student activity fee should be reevaluated and the fat trimmed. Surely groups like UPUA, which received about $32,000 this year and spent around half, can make do with less. There is no reason for this facilities fee when there's already extra money sitting around. (Or in the UPUA bank account.)

And while it's nice that the administration is listening to students' calls for more recreational space, where is the plan for how they're going to spend our money? "Facilities that are not classroom, library or laboratory spaces" is not a plan, it's an idea.

The end of the road for this proposed fee is the May 16 Board of Trustees meeting, where trustees will vote on whether or not to put the new fees into place. Since student trustee Galen Foulke has graduated from University Park and is now at The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center -- not very close to "facilities that are not classroom, library or laboratory spaces" -- the undergraduate students who are being hit up for this fee are being left out of the discussion altogether.

Bring it to the student-elected government, UPUA; bring it to the students on UPAC; bring it to the very people who will have to dig into their pockets for an $200 on top of already increasing tuition. We'd appreciate the favor.