
The Facilities And Campus Enhancement Initiative was passed by the UC Davis student body in February 1999. The ballot initiative proposed a bundle of loosely related campus upgrades, all under the same bill and carrying a hefty price tag. The unifying theme behind many of the upgrades was the UC Davis UCD athletic departments Move to Division I move from Division II to Division IAA.

 Campus Enhancements 

  Multiuse stadium  http://wwwnews.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id7260 Dateline article
  Schaal Aquatics Center
  ARC Activities and Recreation Center
  Student Recruitment and Retention Center

 Financial impact 

All these topnotch facilities (However, the SRRC being in the South Hall basement is far from top notch) are coming at a significant cost to students. To fund the three capital athletic projects, the referendum called for an $18perquarter increase in student fees. The new multiuse stadium under construction will cost $30 million, and studentbased fees from the F.A.C.E. Initiative account for almost twothirds of that cost, according to UCDs Dateline. (I dont know how much of the ARC and Aquatics Center tabs were picked up by students.)

Users/RobertBaron Robert Baron notes that the above statement about the actual cost is not entirely accurate.  Every undergraduate instate student pays $315.00 per year out of their student fees to pay for the F.A.C.E. initiative.  Go to http://budget.ucdavis.edu/studentfees/ to visit the UC Davis Office of Budget & Institutional Analysis for the full breakdown.

 Controversy 

Undergraduate Student fees, over the course of (some number of) years, pay for the projects in the FACE initiative. This means that the students who chose to impose these fees on the student body would graduate before paying the bulk of the costs; conversely, UC Davis UCDs current student body, already reeling from a 60 percent overall fee increase since 2001 and facing further tuition hikes, had no say in whether the school would take on this additional financial commitment. Still, most of the students in 1999 realized the heavy consequences of the bill, and a record number of voters turned out to vote on the bill in the winter election.

The initiative passed by seventy percent. In Fall 2004, the ASUCD Senate passed a bill to include an initiative on the next elections ballot to allow students to choose to raise the threshold for new feebased initiatives to a minimum 60 percent majority. If students then passed that ballot measure, it would have served to restrict fee increases from measures with lessthandecisive support from students. FACE was exactly the scenario the bills authors wished to prevent in the future. ThenASUCD ASUCD President President Kalen Gallagher vetoed the bill, and a cowed Senate senate withdrew the bill.

Additionally, the Move to Division I DI transition also requires most of UC Davis UCDs sports teams to sit out the playoff seasons for several years  regardless of how well the teams do before playoffs. UC Davis UCD football will next be eligible for DIAA playoffs in the 20072008 season. http://www.californiaaggie.com/media/storage/paper981/news/2003/09/25/Sports/WhatAre.We.Playing.For1315233.shtml Aggie article
