I’m writing in response to Tuesday’s article in The Maneater titled “[MSA to ask for student fee increase](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2012/9/24/msa-ask-student-fee-increase-pay-200000-services/),” to clear up a few points of misinformation. First, the central idea of the article is incorrect. MSA is not asking for a student fee increase. We’re asking for a reallocation — a bigger portion of the fees that students currently pay. In simpler terms, we’re asking for a bigger slice of the pie, not a bigger pie. Every organization and program that receives funding from the student activity fee has the right to ask for the funding it needs, and we have services that are badly in need of this funding. MSA will make its case for this reallocation, and the Student Fee Review Committee will make its own decision, but we would be remiss not to ask for a bigger slice of the pie for student services and programs.

Although the article placed most of its emphasis on funding for Department of Student Activities concerts, it gives scant attention to the services that would be impacted the most by our proposed reallocation. The Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention Center and its Green Dot program are, by far, our top priorities in this reallocation request. The $45,000 requested for RSVP, which provides a valuable service for the Mizzou community, will go further there than it would with DSA, for example. This funding will pay our RSVP coordinator, who’s currently paid on a grant set to expire this year.

[Tuesday’s editorial](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2012/9/25/dsa-funding-increase-unnecessary-overshadows-legit/) criticizing funding requests for DSA also focuses, somewhat oddly, on concerts. It’s true that DSA would be able to bring more popular artists, such as Fun., to campus with a larger portion of the fees students already pay. But don’t forget that this funding also brings speakers for events like Celebrate Ability Week, Veterans Week and One Mizzou. Providing services and lectures to make Mizzou a more diverse, more accepting campus is a valuable aspect of DSA, and a reallocation of funds for these purposes would truly be worthy.

Again, I want to stress that no student fee increase is being proposed by MSA in this reallocation process. Every organization and program has the right to ask for a larger portion of student fees that are already paid, and MSA will continue to do this to serve programs in the students’ best interest.

—Xavier Billingsley
MSA President
xavierbillingsley@mail.missouri.edu