A feeling of tension dominated the Rogue Room on Monday as the Emerald weathered an hour-and-a-half ASUO Programs Finance Committee meeting where the ASUO Executive urged for a $12,000 decrease from the previous year’s allocation.
The Emerald’s request of $121,025 was met by a $106,503 Executive recommendation. PFC allocated $120,407 for the Emerald, a 1.2 percent increase from 2003-04.
Emerald General Manager Judy Riedl said the Emerald raises more than three-quarters of a million dollars through advertising and other activities. The amount the Emerald requested from PFC is the projected deficit, Editor in Chief Brad Schmidt said.
“It’s the amount that’s vital to the Emerald because it’s the amount that will be required (for us) to remain solvent,” Schmidt said.
The Executive used a formula to calculate its recommendation that mostly took into account readership numbers taken from an Emerald survey, the student population and cost per paper, among other things.
ASUO Vice President Eddy Morales said the Executive recommendation was “generous.”
Riedl severely objected to the proposed budget cuts, citing increased production costs and a larger student population.
“Given that we provide the same level of service to a larger student body, why should we get cut?” she asked.
A large part of the hearing was devoted to debating exactly which formula should be used to determine the Emerald’s allocation and the validity of the readership survey the Emerald provided.
“A readership survey should be part of (determining the allocation) … but I don’t think this should be the one,” PFC Chairman Adrian Gilmore said.
His and other PFC members’ skepticism with the readership survey was because the survey was based on only 300 readers, which, according to Gilmore, is not sufficient in determining an accurate campus-wide readership figure..
Other PFC members were concerned that the allocation would be funding papers for non-students, thus disrupting what ASUO President Maddy Melton described as “the spirit of what (incidental fees are) for — for students.”
PFC member Michelle Rose voiced her concerns on providing non-students with papers.
“I don’t think it’s fiscally responsible,” she said.
Another concern was that too many papers were being printed, but PFC member Toby Piering defended the Emerald, saying, “It’s not in their best interest to waste money by printing too many papers.”
PFC member Colin Andries formulated the final figure that PFC eventually agreed on by taking the readership survey out of the formula. The budget passed by a slim one-vote margin, 4-3-0.
ASUO spokeswoman Taraneh Foster did not comment on how ASUO felt about the final decision, but said that the large discrepancy between the Executive recommendation and the final allocation was “interesting.”
“(ASUO) strives to be as accurate as possible and protect the incidental fee,” she said.