Terri Adams, a senior anthropology and women and gender studies major, stood in front of Tuesday’s Student Government Assembly with both hands clenched on the podium and eyes locked on the audience.

“Raise your hand if your parents pay your tuition,” she said. Almost every hand in Student Government went up. “Then honestly, should you even have a say?”

This was only the beginning to a long debate leading to the passage of AR27, a piece of legislation introduced last week by liberal arts representative John Lawler. Despite initial opposition, AR27 will now allow students to voice their opinions on tuition increases and budget cuts.

After electing officers for SG and other campus organizations on the electronic ballot, students will be presented with a non-binding referendum asking them if they support the Tuition Policy Advisory Committee’s proposed tuition increases, and if students would accepts cuts to a wide variety of university services and programs. Voters will have the opportunity to respond with “yes,” “no” or that they do not wish to answer.

The legislation also calls for the creation of a campus wide survey on affordability, tuition and budgetary concerns in order to gain an understanding of how the TPAC’s recommendations would affect students. Much of the opposition to the referendum stemmed from support of using only the survey and striking all language of the ballot questions from AR27.

“I opposed the referendum because the way we had the questions worded wasn’t going to tell us what we didn’t already know,” said business school representative Taylor Ragsdale. “Of course students don’t want tuition increase. That’s illogical.”

Ragsdale said only about 8,000 students vote for SG president and vice-president, and that by the time you get down to the bottom of the ballot there’s historically only about 3,000 student votes. These votes, he said, wouldn’t be scientifically sound or unbiased.

Lawler, on the other hand, said the referendum was necessary, as students have lacked any real ability to democratically voice an official stance on tuition at UT-Austin.

“We hope this referendum provides a chance for all students to demonstrate the true student opinion,” he said. “Not just the opinion of a few hand-picked student leaders.”

However, communication college representative Jannah Deis said that before voting, students need to realize that if tuition isn’t increased, the University will have to face major budget cuts including cutting programs and services across campus.

“The only way this would not be the case is if the Legislature allocated us more money which is highly unlikely,” said Deis. “As a part of the Communication College Tuition Budget Advisory Committee, I have seen the hard data that increasing tuition is our only option if we want the University to continue running at its best.”

Austin Carlson, law student and seven year SG member, said that he doesn’t believe budget cuts are the only alternative to raising tuition though. He advocated methods such as exploring alternative ways of funding, cutting from areas that don’t include services to the students, and restructuring classes.

SG President Natalie Butler threatened to veto AR27 though if the second referendum question referring to budget cuts was not included in the legislation. Carlson said he thinks Butler did this to ensure that the TPAC proposal was not undermined if students select that they do not support a tuition hike, since Butler supported the TPAC recommendation last fall.

“It’s not fundamentally true that you have to cut a wide range of university services without an increase in tuition,” Carlson said. “That’s what TPAC believes, not what I personally believe.”