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Before fall semester, Board of Trustees raises tuition and bans smoking

August 27, 2015
<p>The MSU Board of Trustees discuss issues during their&nbsp;June 17, 2015, meeting at the Hannah Administration Building. Joshua Abraham/The State News</p>

The MSU Board of Trustees discuss issues during their June 17, 2015, meeting at the Hannah Administration Building. Joshua Abraham/The State News

Photo by Joshua Abraham | The State News

For the sixth year in a row, the MSU Board of Trustees raised tuition again in June.

For undergraduates who are freshmen and sophomores (lower division) and juniors and seniors (upper division), the change will be 2.7 percent. Lower division students will then pay about $12 more per credit hour or $13,560 per year, assuming a 15 credit course load per semester, and upper division students will pay about $13.25 more per credit hour or $15,105.

Out-of-state students will pay about $52.75 more per credit hour, and graduate students will pay about $26.75 more per hour, or 4 percent.

The trustees openly lamented the raise, claiming they had no choice if they wanted to keep MSU a competitive institution, and instead shifted the blame onto years of declining state support for higher education.

Coupled with the tuition raise was an increase in housing prices late in the spring semester.

Housing prices were raised by 3.5 percent for those living on-campus. The yearly costs will increase from $9,154 to $9,474 with the purchase of the silver meal plan, although residents of the MSU apartment complexes will see a much smaller increase.

When presenting the hike to the Board of Trustees, Vennie Gore, the vice president for Auxiliary Enterprises justified the increases, saying students receive a value totaling up to $42 per day and the dorms provide many support systems for those living away from home for the first time.

Although possibly a minor change for non-smokers, or a massive change for students that do smoke, incoming freshman and returning students are going to start to see the beginning of MSU’s campus-wide smoking ban.

Though the ban will not go into effect until the fall of 2016, MSU’s first outreach and information initiatives will roll out this fall, MSU spokesperson Jason Cody said. The ban was approved by the MSU Board of Trustees earlier this summer.

According to the new policy, not only cigarettes, but all tobacco products including smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes will be included in the ban.

Exactly how the ban, specifically the educational parts of it, will be implemented have not yet been finalized.

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