To:       F-1 and J-1 Students and Scholars on Rutgers ' Visa Sponsorship:

From:   Karen Kavanagh
            Executive Vice President for Administrative Affairs

Date:     July 30, 2003

Re:        SEVIS Administration Fee

    Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick has received a number of e-mail messages from international students expressing concern about the new SEVIS Administration Fee. The President wants students to know of his sensitivity to this issue, and he has asked me to respond to the messages on his behalf. Rather than provide individual responses to each message, I have decided to send one open message to the entire international student community so that all of you can share in this exchange.

    The president deeply regrets the need for such fee, and he particularly regrets that some of our international students have been offended by the institution's decision to assess the fee. The administration recognizes that the very existence of the SEVIS program itself is highly emotionally-charged; a fee necessitated by SEVIS costs is also, understandably, emotionally-charged.  Indeed, several of you have commented on the indignity of being asked to pay for a program that you feel already demeans you by singling you out for tracking and monitoring.

    The University's implementation of this new fee came only after difficult deliberations in which many issues were considered. Of those, two particular issues stand out as ones I feel most important to share with you. First, Rutgers is an active member of the AAU, NASULGC and several other associations that participated in a national coalition of higher education associations opposing the development of the SEVIS program. The entire higher education community in this country was very unhappy to see SEVIS become the law-for many of the same reasons that international students and scholars themselves were. Second, while many schools have always collected an international student fee to fund basic advising services for international students, Rutgers has long maintained that it is the responsibility of the institution to provide such basic services to the populations it admits and enrolls. The University has always fully funded its international student/scholar offices on all three campuses at no extra charge to international students.

     For these and other reasons, the administration initially resisted implementing a SEVIS fee. Over the past 18 months, however, as the University's SEVIS-related expenses for hardware, software, operating overhead, new personnel and overtime wages grew significantly, it became increasingly evident that it would not be possible for the institution to continue carrying the full costs of SEVIS compliance indefinitely. The University did cover initial SEVIS compliance costs and delay implementation of a SEVIS fee for as long as it was possible, and it will continue in the future to shoulder some of the costs associated with SEVIS compliance.

     We are aware that some institutions implemented fees to help defray institutional SEVIS costs but named their fees in general terms such as "international student fee." Rutgers believes that our international students have a right to know that this fee is specifically driven by the costs of the SEVIS federal mandate.

    We now face two realities that challenge both the principles behind the higher education community's opposition to the development of SEVIS as well as those underlying the University's longstanding commitment to provide international student/scholar services at no charge to international students and scholars themselves.

    The first of these realities is that SEVIS is now the law. If we choose not to comply with this law, we must stop enrolling internationals students and hosting international faculty and scholars; if we choose to comply, we will somehow have to fund an institutional infrastructure to handle compliance responsibilities. Given the unacceptable ramifications of choosing not to comply, Rutgers has chosen to comply with the law.

    The second of these realities is that Rutgers is experiencing an unprecedented third major budget cut in two years, and every member of the University community is feeling the pain to some degree or another. With each new cut, more people are affected in more ways. The institution has had to curtail existing academic programs and support services, and in some cases to eliminate certain programs and services altogether. In such a budgetary climate, the institution is simply unable to take on new expenditures, and particularly one as major as the full cost of SEVIS compliance.

    It is not always possible for complex communities and organizations such as Rutgers to function in ways that seem perfectly fair to every member of those communities. Like any large organization, Rutgers faces many competing interests and pressures from many sources, both internal and external.

    The University administration gave full consideration to the SEVIS fee issue and reluctantly determined that—given Rutgers' numerous organizational constraints—the only viable option was a combination of support from the University and from the SEVIS fee which was announced last week

    We wish this fee were not necessary, and we regret that the unwieldy cost of SEVIS compliance has forced the University for the first time in its history to ask international students to help pay for a program we would far prefer to be able to manage at no extra cost to our students

Sincerely,

Karen Kavanagh

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This letter was distributed to this list by:

Marcy Cohen
Director, Center for International Faculty & Student Services
Rutgers , the State University of New Jersey
Campus at New Brunswick
180 College Avenue
New Brunswick , NJ 08901-8537
tel: 732.932.7015
fax: 732.932.7992
email: marcohen@rci.rutgers.edu 
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cifss/