On Tuesday, April 27 at the weekly Student Government Association (SGA) meeting, the SGA Treasurer announced which student orgs would receive Regular Funding.
Because the Mount Holyoke News (MHN) submitted an incomplete application past deadline, the news organization received $0 from its Regular Funding request of $25,000.
The vote to approve Regular Funding allotments for the 2010-2011 academic year was approved in Senate by a vote of 19-18 with three abstentions.
Although several other orgs received funding between $0-$1, the exact number of orgs that received no funding could not be confirmed by press time.
“Most people support the MH News,” said Korean-Asian Sisters Association (KASA) senator Diane Kim ’12, who voted to approve the Regular Funding budget on Tuesday, because she said it would not be fair to other orgs otherwise.
The SGA website offers specific instructions on how to complete a budget application. According to SGA Treasurer Nikki Chambers ’10, the application submitted by the MHN was not specific enough in terms of costs.
“We want to make sure that people are using the SGA funds as appropriately as possible as we can allocate them,” said Chambers. The more detail provided, she added, the better. Chambers said she tries to give every student organization what they need in order to allocate funds as fairly as possible.
According to Editor-in-Chief Amanda Aultman ’10, the MHN’s budget application had “big holes” and was not based on past ledgers.
The MHN’s application was also turned in late. SGA received the application 48 hours after it was due.
“We always give them [the MHN] what they need because the newspaper is a vital org on our campus. But I don’t like using that argument as much because every org is a vital part of our campus,” said Chambers. “SGA is not trying to get rid of the newspaper in any kind of capacity, but please understand that we can’t make exceptions if people don’t hand in their stuff on time.”
Chambers and the Assistant Director of Student Programs, Joshua Nelson, are working with the MHN to figure out what can be done to keep the newspaper up and running next year.
“I do want to see [the MHN] improve their budget, and then from there we, myself and the Assistant Director Joshua [Nelson] can meet and look into the budget and see what we can do.”
The newspaper’s options include applying for Special Funding, fundraising and increasing ad sales. The MHN is also looking into cutting costs by finding a new publishing company, said Aultman. The current publisher, Turley Publishing, requires a minimum of 2,000 issues to be printed each week. The cost for printing on a week-to-week basis is $600 to $1000.
Another solution being considered by SGA for the MHN is allocating a certain amount of money to the newspaper each year. This was done for the yearbook as well, after a similar incident two years ago, according to Director of Student Programs John Laprade.
“We did not receive regular funding for a year because at the time of applying for it, we still had the money from the previous year in the account, which looked like we had enough money to produce a yearbook. With so much money in the account from the previous year, [Ways and Means] denied the application,” said Kate Popp ’11, Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Llamarada. “Our solution was to apply for special funding for partial payments to our publisher who worked with us in faith that we would have the money at some point. Since then, we’ve been working to change our schedule so that the yearbook can come out in the spring instead of the fall, which would save money and allow students to sign the books before they graduate.” The yearbook relies on advertisements from parents as well as the revenue made from selling the yearbooks to students to supplement the funding.
Model UN senator Becky Echevarria ’10 said she believed that alternative funding was a potential solution for the MHN. “I don’t think the campus is going to let the newspaper not exist,” she said.
Rachel Krueger ’13 contributed reporting to this article.
This article has been revised to accurately reflect Senator Diane Kim’s views on the Regular Funding budget.
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