If I ever need heart surgery, I’m not going to ask a high school teacher to perform it.

Likewise, when the university is deciding what funds it needs to operate effectively, it shouldn’t ask four Student Senate members to make that crucial decision.

Last week, the Student Senate’s Tuition and Fee Review Committee met to divide up a $29.20 student-fee increase among nine cash-needy university entities. This committee’s recommendations are normally rubber-stamped by the Student Senate. I should know – I was a member of the senate for two semesters.

In addition, those recommendations are also usually accepted by the president and Eastern’s Board of Trustees.

Now, I’m all for student input. Students are obviously the ones paying the bills around here, and we definitely deserve a say. But the committee which made these decisions that will likely become reality was only comprised of four Student Senate members.

That’s right. Only four Student Senate members.

The Student Senate Bylaws for the committee require that three students, one faculty member and one staff member be voting members of the committee. The three students didn’t show up, and no effort was ever made to appoint a faculty or staff voting member to the committee.

It may be just me, but when the senate wrote those bylaws, it probably wanted the committee to at least partially represent the campus as whole.

The senate made absolutely no effort to diversify the committee. That is unacceptable. That is not shared governance, an ideological theory on which this university is proudly based.

Such a theory is the reason students have representation on the Board of Trustees, Faculty Senate, Council on Academic Affairs, Council on University Planning and Budget, University Union Advisory Committee, Parking Board, Library Board and other important policy-making university entities.

Since I have been a proud student of Eastern, I have watched the Student Senate nobly grip and fight for student input on all aspects of Eastern. And now ironically, they are guilty of the same ignorance they accused others of.

Because of its arrogance and lack of diversity, this committee made fee-increase decisions on superfluous knowledge and unsubstantiated facts. It said Textbook Rental needs to do a better job managing its funds, so it cut its proposed fee increase.

What do these senate members know about fiscal responsibility? Better yet, what do they really know about how the textbook rental system operates. They cast the same ridiculous judgment on the student-insurance fee and Student Recreation Center.

Eastern deserves representation of all campus constituents, as well as informed constituents, in the deciding of tuition and fee increases.

And the only way for that to happen is to form a permanent and separate university tuition and fee review committee with faculty, staff, student and administration representation.

The committee must be separate from other university entities, it must have appointments from the various policy-making committees and it must be equally balanced among the constituents of this campus.

The creation of such a committee is the only true democratic way to make sure the fee and tuition increases are for the betterment of Eastern and absent of any bias and incompetence.

Joseph Ryan is a senior journalism major and a biweekly columnist for The Daily Eastern News. His e-mail address is [email protected]. Columns are the opinion of the author.