Editorial : SA’s financial vision inadequately assesses funding requests from student publications

Among an otherwise streamlined Student Association budget season, the new financial vision proved unsatisfactory for two student publications: Zipped and Jerk magazines. Both of these publications asked for more money than they received and said the new budget process continues to inhibit their ability to grow their presence on campus.

The financial vision alleviates most of the confusion and ambiguity surrounding requests by student organizations for programming, such as bringing in a speaker, hosting a dance or sponsoring a concert. The tier system, however, does not accommodate or assess publications appropriately. Given that funding for publications has been an issue in previous sessions, SA could have worked to fix these issues by specifically addressing publications in the new financial vision.

SA evaluates publications’ requests based on the number of students who participate in the publication and by reading them and subjectively assessing their relevance to students, said SA Comptroller Jeff Rickert. Although the budget process frustrated only two publications, it is clear this process is flawed. The number of students involved is not necessarily representative of success or quality and can be ambiguous. Likewise, the Finance Board lacks the expertise to evaluate the quality or potential of a publication based on personal opinion alone.

The new tier system marked a big and mostly successful change to the budget process. But SA should tweak the system to provide publications with rules specific to them. Funding a publication for an entire semester is much different from funding a student organization for one event. Publications should have a path for attaining more funds to put toward a multitude of things, such as a higher distribution or more color pages.

Such proof of success could include advertising revenue. Giving more money to organizations with advertisers may seem counterintuitive, but in reality advertising shows a publication has attracted the trust of businesses and the readership to make that advertising viable. Expert recommendation could also gauge the quality of publications. This could come from a willing professor, the publications’ advisers or a team of visual and print journalism students. A history of awards should also help determine a publication’s success.

Quantitative data makes drawing conclusions and deciding finances much easier. Clearly, publications don’t easily lend themselves to objective evaluation. Rather than rate publications on the number of students involved, perhaps SA should rate them on the number of cumulative hours put into planning, writing, reporting, designing, editing, preparing launch parties, working with other organizations, etc. This may be difficult to regulate, but were SA to enforce tallying these hours, the most active and dedicated — and ultimately successful — publications would come to the fore.

Rickert, the SA comptroller, said publications rarely ask for more than $5,000. Although the scale may be smaller than that of programming requests, a difference of $1,000 means a lot in terms of what a publication can do and how much it can grow. Perhaps publications should be placed on an entirely different set of tiers that appropriately fit the scale of their operations.