Save the Date?

In 2019, the Marga Hosaeus Fitness Center’s roof collapsed due to snow accumulation. Five years and many delays later, students are still waiting for the construction of the new Student Wellness Center to end. Students contribute to the development’s fund through their student fees. The project has faced so many delays that many students will never be able to use the facilities they directly paid for. Students are charged these fees whether they will have access to the facility or not. The delays and unfair fees represent a faltering commitment to students' tuition costs and institutional honesty.

“Save the Date” is the subject line for two emails regarding the opening of the Wellness Center. The first email from the Associated Students of Montana State University (ASMSU) President announced March 20 as the opening date. It was sent on Nov. 11, 2023. The second email, sent only a few months later on Feb. 1, announced Aug. 22 as the opening date — a whole five months later than the original date. This delay pushes the opening to another semester and essentially bars an entire graduating class from seeing the facility.

Honestly, it comes down to this: the costs and delays surrounding the Student Wellness Center lack clarity and honesty. There is no reason why students should not be given regular updates about the progression of the building. Instead we received delayed opening ceremony emails and pure speculation on when it would be done. 

I, for one, attempted to gauge the project's completion date by watching through the years from my view in Romney. For example, I have a photo of the construction site from 2022 in which the building does not have walls on it. 

If the construction were more routinely discussed through updates, it would temper student expectations.

 Anyone who saw the Student Wellness Center’s progress in early 2024 might have reasonably assumed that the building would be completed in early spring. This lack of communication shows the erosion of honesty and respect for the student body. We are all involved with financially supporting this development, and yet it seems that paying the fee does not buy us institutional transparency. 

This lack of transparency is especially present in the payment structure which adds building operation and development costs to student tuition. All of this information can be accessed through MyInfo within the detailed tuition breakdown.

Currently, there are two specific Student Wellness Center fees: the debt service fee and the operation and management fee. The Student Wellness Center adds 59 dollars and four cents to the overall tuition cost. A student graduating in the previous or upcoming semester will have paid eight semesters — or around 472 dollars — for a building they will likely never enter. Now, apply that per-person amount to the entire undergraduate class for the last four years, which is around 15,000 people. It totals around seven million dollars. 

The lack of transparency can really take an effect here because according to NBC Montana, on June 23, 2023, the Student Wellness Center took 78 million dollars to construct.

To foster goodwill among the student body, it is imperative that communication and transparency remains paramount. Students want to know where and how their money is being used, and they have a right to know. The students who will never use the Student Wellness Center were taken advantage of. 

This could have been addressed by including bi-monthly updates or by sending semester-based construction information right to our inboxes. This would temper expectations and keep everyone in the loop. A more transparent cost structure would also contextualize and lessen the vilification of tuition costs.