Hundreds of students join junior Bryn Cater in petitioning school authorities to remove a student fee for use of the Pony Athletic Center.

In December, about 900 students and staff members signed a petition, which seeks to remove a monthly $20 fee for the Pony Athletic Center, known as the PAC. Despite the petition’s broad support, the Community Education department maintained that the fee is a necessity to offset management costs.

“I think it is extremely unfair that we have to pay to use our own facilities taken that we have used them in previous years for free,” petition founder Bryn Carter explained. “The goal of our petition is to make the PAC free for all students and teachers.”

When the PAC was completed this fall, many students were surprised by the administrative fee, given that Stillwater area residents already paid for construction of the multi million dollar facilities. However, the PAC fee covers an expense that may not be immediately obvious.

“Since we have the facility, we need to have some supervision of those students that use it and supervision costs money,” Activities Director Ricky Michel explained.

Anticipating the school’s resistance, Carter set high goals for the petition and laid the groundwork for an effort that might take years.

“We do have to bring our petition out into the community more, not just the school itself.  It might not work this year, but as long as we get something started for ongoing years, we will be fine,” Carter explained.

Even with continuing support, the petition might face a challenging path towards success. Removing the activity fee would involve more facets of the school bureaucracy than just the Community Education department, which is in charge of managing the PAC.

“We did have a meeting with a few of the people who work in the PAC including [Michel] and they basically told us ‘no we’re going to need more data for five or ten years before we can do
anything about changing the price,’” Carter said.

“They have to be with their coach, they can’t just walk up there and start using it. We ask our coaches, ‘If you’re going to use anything, be with your team so it’s easy to identify the group,’” Michel explained.

For a full list of Student Use Guidelines are on the Community Education website. The Pony Activity Center is open Saturday and Sunday from 7 a.m.-7 p.m.

Still many students, including senior Jack Degonda, feel that the PAC ought to be completely open to sports participants, who already pay an activity fee of around $195 per sport.

“Contributing members of sports teams have in enough hours that the PAC centers cost is only reasonable for people who don’t go to this school,” Degonda said.

Ultimately, regardless of how carefully reasoned the PAC fee is, it faces opposition simply because the school offers many pay on demand services which used to be free.

“The reality is your generation is used to user fees. When I was a student at Stillwater High School, it was just part of the whole package. Unfortunately we have blanketed everyone to say that if you’re going to use something that the school does not fund, you’re going to have to pay for it,” Michel said.