Senate Finance Committee

A few weeks ago, the Student Senate Finance Committee voted to cut The Eagle’s budget allocation for next year by $2,000.
This is the first cut The Eagle has received since the 1997-98 school year, when reduced funding caused a budget crunch across the board.

The total amount the Finance Committee allocated for student activities this year was $105,000—the same amount as last year.

The Finance Committee asked questions about The Eagle’s printing costs, advertising revenues, and the planned fee for mail subscribers. They also asked about our new Web site, csceagle.com, which we offer as a free alternative for readers who are not interested in paying the cost of postage to continue receiving the paper in the mail.

However, despite the opportunity afforded by these questions, the Finance Committee and the additional Senate members present at the appeal never gave adequate justification for this cut.

The committee said that copies of old papers sit unread in stacks in every building. We explained that when our distribution managers deliver the new issues each week, they pick up last week’s to be recycled.

The committee said that charging fees for advertising and for mailing are considered fundraising activities. The committee did not say that fundraising is not allowed. However, the committee then said it is uncooperative to charge other student organizations for advertising space.

We asked the committee to explain the process by which they decided our allocation, and how the entire budget was ratified by the senate. The committee said that they did not need to explain their procedures to us.

Lastly, the committee said—after the fact—that our appeal was private, and therefore details of the hearing should not be shared. But how could the proceedings be private when non-members of the Finance Committee were allowed to attend our appeal?

We are curious why the Student Senate, and by extension the Senate Finance Committee think discussions about how the student body’s money is spent should not be shared with or explained to the student body.

The staff of The Eagle would appreciate the comments of any committee or senate member willing to shed light on this situation via letter to the editor.