Last week the Board of Visitors' Financial Committee recommended increasing the average cost of all on-Grounds student housing by 9.7 percent for the 2006-2007 year.
The recommendation for the rate increase is standard procedure for the BOV, explained BOV Secretary Alexander G. Gilliam, Jr. Though the meetings did not include the full assembly of the BOV, they still carry weight, and the meeting's decisions are likely to be ratified, Gilliam said.
"The BOV at its winter meeting always sets the housing rates for the next academic year," he said.
The entire Board will meet Feb. 3.
The decisions "won't become graven in stone till the full board passes [them]," Gilliam said. "If the Finance Committee recommends something, it means they have discussed it thoroughly."
Gilliam explained that the cost of living on-Grounds, which currently averages $3,289, is lower than the average cost of housing at Virginia's public universities. "The average across the board is $3,493, so we always try to keep ours lower," he said. "The percentage increase that the Committee passed was 9.7 percent, which was the same percentage that increased last year. ... What they recommended [for next year] was 3,639."
Of the money gained from the increase in housing rates, 5.1 percent will be allotted to the remodeling and replacing of dormitories, specifically the Alderman Road buildings, Gilliam added.
"What the BOV did last year was they voted to replace the Alderman Road dormitories," he said. "They'll do it one by one. Nothing has been done to Alderman since they were built."
Though the program is large in scale, Gilliam explained that the BOV would implement it slowly.
"So the idea is that people won't be forced to live in tents," he said.
The remaining 4.6 percent of the increase will go toward operational expenses. Yoke San L. Reynolds, University vice president and chief financial officer of the University, explained that the average $350 per semester increase for students would, among other things, complement the across-the-board hike in utilities prices as well as any state-required housing salary increases.
"The state told us how much to increase salaries by, and since housing is a stand-alone auxiliary operation, it has to generate revenues to cover all expenses," Reynolds said. "There is no subsidy from the state or the University."
Because the financial changes go into effect next year, students living on-Grounds in the following fall semester would be subject to the new prices.
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