As bills came due for the 2016-2017 school year, a new fee appeared on student financial accounts.

Aside from the Legal Service Fee and the Green Initiatives Fund, the Student Media Fee is an optional $9 fee new to student financials this year.

The fee, which will be distributed once a semester, would support the student media organizations on campus.

Organizations like BG24 News, The BG News and Key Magazine are “not a true auxiliary (organization) and not a true academic” group. They rely on the support of the funds provided by this fee, said Kelly Taylor, a lecturer in the journalism department at the University.

Taylor is also the chair of the Senate Student Media Advisory Board, which developed the initiative three years ago.

“We were trying to look at a different model to fund student media that would be both sustainable and, because it benefits the entire campus, would still recognize … the independence of student media,” Taylor said.

The flat fee will allow the organizations who benefit from it the reliability of steady funding as opposed to the fluctuation of proposing budgets to the Student Budget Committee. The fee is also only part of the total amount of funding for student media.

The members of the SSMAB researched media fees at other universities and used their models to “bench-mark” what the University’s new student media fee should be.

University Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Dave Kielmeyer said the University was one of the few universities not to have such a fee.

Taylor and SSMAB worked together to develop a fee that wouldn’t tax the student body too heavily, but would provide enough funds to make a difference for student media organizations.

“It seemed like as we’ve reorganized in student media … it was time to look at how student media was funded,” said Kielmeyer.

Taylor said the student media fee would have a two-fold effect: student media receives funding, and the student body retains an independent medium.

“We need people like journalists asking questions … about (things like) why fees go up,” Taylor said.