University Provost John Etchemendy gave a presentation at last night’s ASSU Undergraduate Senate meeting on tuition increases and spoke about the planned changes to housing at Stanford. The Senate also passed several bills regarding election certification procedures and general fee consolidation.

Etchemendy’s presentation, entitled “University Finance 101 or Why the Numbers Just Don’t Add Up,” largely addressed student concerns about yearly tuition hikes.

The report broke down Stanford’s consolidated revenue into four categories: general funds, grants, auxiliaries and restricted costs, which refer to gifts donated to support specific programs.

Tuition comprises 57 percent of general funds, and the rest is made up of endowments and indirect costs.

“We’re not a business,” Etchemendy said. “We’re a nonprofit organization devoted to research and education.”

He distinguished between full tuition, the published sticker price of attending Stanford, and net tuition, the price that families pay after receiving financial aid and outside grants.

According to Etchemendy, even though the full tuition has been increasing at a higher rate than in previous years — from 4.3 percent in 1999 to 5.0 percent in 2002 — the net tuition has been rising at a lower rate over time — with a growth rate of 6.5 percent in 1999 compared to a 3.2 percent growth rate in 2002.

One reason for this decline is that the current economy is not as strong as in previous years and therefore families can afford to pay less.

Etchemendy also discussed student participation in the recently proposed housing changes, specifically the transformation of Stern, Wilbur and Florence Moore Halls into all-freshman dormitories.

“Students provided a high amount of input into the housing plans,” Etchemendy said. “We gathered lots of survey data about what students think of their housing experiences.”

The idea to convert these dorms to house freshmen was largely prompted by these surveys, which demonstrate that there is a large margin of students who have had better experiences in all-freshmen dorms in comparison to their peers who lived in four-class dorms during their freshman year.

“When we look at exit surveys, the people who think most highly of their housing situation were in all-freshmen dorms,” Etchemendy said.

In addition, housing administrators want to create a premiere year of housing so that accommodations improve for students each year. To provide better rooms for upperclassmen and more singles for seniors, most four-class dorms would need to be replaced by all-freshmen dorms.

“The only way to achieve this is to use up the least desirable housing on freshmen who in fact enjoy their freshman dorm experience regardless of their housing,” said Etchemendy.

Following the provost’s presentation, the Senate approved a bill implementing a constitutional procedure for invalidating fraudulent elections. In past years, ASSU executive elections needed to be certified by the Senate and the Graduate Student Council in order to be official. Under the new bill, the election would automatically be certified unless it is proved fraudulent. The bill must still be voted on by the Graduate Student Council.

The Senate also approved another bill that would merge the programming general fee funds and the community service fee funds, which would allow these monies to be used more flexibly because they would not need to be allocated for specific use. The new “Programming and Community Service General Fee” will be levied on undergraduates to fund the operations and community service programs of organizations with significant undergrad membership, except for student publications and groups that receive special fees, the bill stated. This measure still needs to be approved by the undergraduate student body during the spring elections.

A third bill was approved by the Senate to establish a procedure in case of a tie in the ASSU executive elections. According to the language of the bill, if such a situation occurs, the slate that received the fewest votes in preceding or primary elections will be eliminated. If this method fails to determine a winner, the student legislative bodies will evaluate the breakdown of each tied slate’s votes by population and the slate with votes most equally distributed between the graduate and undergraduate populations will be declared the winner.

The Senate passed another 13 less consequential bills, including one that would change the name of the Committee on Student Life to the Committee of Student Life, Housing and Education, and another that would provide an alternative to expulsion for senators who miss many standing committee meetings.