By Kirk Laughlin

In order to provide new services to students, the University of Louisville instituted a mandatory $35 health fee for all students with over 6.5 credit hours a semester, which was passed at the end of the 2006 spring semester.

During his State of the Student Body Address on Nov. 14 SGA President Darrell Messer,said, “the health fee has been one of the most heated issues for the students at the University of Louisville. There is no doubt the implementation was unorganized and confusing.”

In order to address the issues that this health fee has brought up, Messer put the challenge to SGA Vice President of Services Justin Tooley to “clean up the health fee” and to ask “where are the services that students are paying for?”

According to Tooley almost $350,000 of the estimated $889,100 raised each year by the health fee is being used to finance the debt for the future construction of a new student health center. The rest of the funds are used to provide certain medical, psychiatric, as well as other services for the student body.

Tooley and others from the SGA met with U of L President Dr. James R. Ramsey and Provost Shirley Willihnganz to discuss what could be accomplished so students could see where their money was being used. In these discussions, it was decided that the construction of the new student health center needed to happen more rapidly to address the student’s frustrations by showing a “tangible result” of the student health fee, Tooley said.

With the decision to build a new health facility made, the question became where it would be located. Kenneth Dietz, director of planning, design and construction at U of L, requested that JRA Architects, LLC, study three locations in and around the Belknap Campus for the new center.

Site A, located to the north of the Houchen’s Building on Brook Street, site B is in the central courtyard of the Floyd Street Garage, and site C would be in the Central Station building next to the Patterson Baseball Field along Central Avenue off of Belknap campus.

The SGA Senate favored site A for a variety of reasons. Tooley said “the on-campus health center would be more convenient to the student body” instead of site C on Central Avenue, which is removed from the bulk of the student body.

Tooley went on to say that site A would also make “parents of visiting students feel more comfortable with sending their child” to U of L, thus it would be a good “recruitment tool.”

Jake Masters, sophomore biology major, said he favors the on-campus sites because “they would be more convenient to the student population.” Adding, that he is “glad to see that my health fee is accomplishing something.”

Kaden Jacobs, a freshman history major, said he favors the Floyd Garage location because “it is nearer to the campus and there is already a structure there to use, so it would be more cost-effective.”

Each site will be roughly 30,000 square feet in size and will provide the same services to students.