Students in COMS 357, Introduction to Studio Production, are not seeing the fruits of the course’s $80 materials fee.

With four sections of 15 students for two semesters, fees total $9,600 and students are questioning what their money is supporting.

At the start of the school year, students were told videocassettes and books for the course must be purchased independently.

The three-hour lab sessions, where students simulate media production, show no evidence of the fee, said junior communication major Travis Kershaw. The purpose of these simulations is to provide students with hands-on experience in producing a show that should resemble a professional production studio.

“The lab is old and everything is outdated,” Kershaw said. “I understand that the stuff is fairly expensive, but that’s almost $10,000 a year, and we don’t know where the money is going.”

Junior communication major Andrew Olech agreed with Kershaw’s views.

“Stuff is broken,” Olech said. “It seems a lot of other universities are way ahead of us. How are we not at the top of the technological field?”

Fees cause confusion

Olech said the class asked its teaching assistant what its fees went to but he did not know. Neither Kershaw nor Olech have voiced their concerns to the professor of the class, Mary Larson.

“He goes in there and tries to fix everything, but as far as getting new stuff, he never really sees it either,” Olech said.

Gary Burns, the assistant chair of the communication department who is in charge of material fees, was unaware of the students’ complaints.

Larson said the fees go to maintenance of equipment and for new equipment, if feasible.

“The equipment we have is not as bad as students like to complain about,” Larson said.

Compared to other universities, Larson said a past teaching assistant of hers from the University of Illinois was only allowed to watch others work the media equipment as an undergraduate. Students there had nothing like the media sequences COMS 357 offers.

“TV equipment is incredibly expensive,” Larson said. “The fees the media students pay in no way cover the cost of new equipment.”

Old equipment replaced quickly

Burns, however, said the money is used for supplies.

“The money paid by students in COMS 357 is used for maintenance, repair, purchase of supplies such as blank videotapes and light bulbs and contribution to overheads in labs used for course assignments,” Burns said. “We have a process for replacing old equipment if it no longer meets curricular needs. Generally, money does not add up over semesters. The university encourages us to spend most of the money during the fiscal year in which it is collected, and we try to do that.”