Any student who has been on East Campus has likely seen events happening in the Harvin Center. There are constantly events on the first floor, sometimes with music being played and other times with booths and free items, but what a lot of students don’t realize is that they are paying for them. Part of your tuition is a “student service fee,” set at $7 a semester, which goes not only toward activities downstairs, but also to clubs, organizations and cultural programs.
“After we do the clubs and organizations, it also does intramurals. With whatever’s left over, that’s where we have the fun,” said Beverly Cage, director of Student Life. “Activities downstairs and giving away shirts, any kind of giving away and luncheons, that’s where that goes.”
There is a council of nine students, Student Government officers who vote along with representatives from both East and West campus on where student service money should go, from ensuring the Harvin Center has the resources to make college life entertaining, to sending members of organizations to conferences they may not have been able to attend otherwise.
Many students don’t even know that they don’t have to pay a fare on Corpus Christi city buses, another perk that the fees have covered.
These fees are not only there to ensure that clubs can do fun things, they’re there to enhance the college experience of every Del Mar student.
“As long as we hold events here in the Harvin Center, students will participate. They’re here to go to class and go home, but with the fees, we try to bring the real collegiate experience. We buy video equipment and all kinds of board games. We have things they can come get to pass time and round out the college experience,” Cage said.
For only $7 students are given the resources they need to have a full college life, compared to the $150 fee that Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi charges every semester.
