In an executive committee meeting of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) last night, GPSS President Jake Faleschini announced that university officials decided to pull the graduate-degree fee proposal from the agenda of today’s Board of Regents meeting.

Doug Wadden, executive vice provost for Academic Affairs and Planning, told Faleschini that President Emmert and Provost Phyllis Wise had reconsidered the issue and would not implement a fee to current UW graduate students.

The decision was made after Faleschini and Student Regent Ben Golden met several times with university officials to express their concerns.

“This was literally going to attach on Friday [if approved],” Faleschini said. “Everybody would have had to pay this fee out of nowhere. Undergrads don’t have to pay this fee, and there’s no way that this should apply to current students who have had no notice or chance to comment.”

Golden was worried about the slippery slope that approval of the graduate-degree fee could have caused at the university. He and GPSS officials feared that administrators would be tempted to implement new fees every time they didn’t have funding for new services.

The graduate-degree fee may be back on the table at the regents meeting in January. In the meantime, the administration will be having a broader conversation about the appropriate procedures for creating fees.

“What is the university’s holistic approach going to be to fees?” Golden asked. “We want to lay out a complete picture of fees at the University of Washington and then we can discuss this.”

Issues that will be discussed today include the UW budget overview, the University’s purchase of the Alumni House, the acceleration of renovating residence halls, and the UW being used as a test site for new ways to monitor energy usage.

Reach reporter Katie McVicker at news@dailyuw.com.