On Tuesday, ASMSU's Academic Assembly will debate its position on MSU's tuition agreement that promises to keep tuition at the rate of inflation in exchange for less funding cuts from the state.
A set of two bills, one supporting the action and the other condemning it, originally were presented at the Feb. 3 Academic Assembly meeting. ASMSU is MSU's undergraduate student government.
The deal, which the MSU Board of Trustees accepted Jan. 27, states that if MSU keeps tuition increases at the rate of inflation which is 2.4 percent, the state will reduce higher education cuts at the school from 5 percent to 3 percent. Gov. Jennifer Granholm introduced the proposal in December.
"We wanted to force a decision from the assembly," said Vinayak Prasad, College of Natural Sciences representative, who seconded both bills. He said the reason for two contradictory bills was that if one bill failed, the opposing bill probably would pass.
"There are some decisions where there are no neutral positions. We have to speak out on the bill," he said at the Feb. 3 meeting.
Assembly Chairperson Jared English moved voting on the bills to this week's meeting because the assembly was evenly split and he wanted representatives to learn more about the proposal.
Experts from the university will be at the next meeting to further explain ramifications of the bill.
Both bills were introduced by another College of Natural Sciences representative, Andrew McCoy.
"I hope that it would have some effect on the bill," he said Sunday. "They're making decisions on us, so our positions should be valuable."
English said the students didn't have a chance to comment on the agreement before MSU accepted it, because the university only had a day to debate.
No one from ASMSU attended the Trustees' special meeting because they received the notice of the meeting the day of and already had previous commitments.
"Had this been a long project, we would have been consulted and kept in the loop," English said.
Members of Academic Assembly first mentioned the possible deal late last semester at a joint meeting between Student Assembly and Academic Assembly.
Academic Assembly didn't comment before MSU accepted the proposition because they thought they would have more time before a finalized plan was presented, McCoy said.
