Council allocated $4,700 to 11 media orgs for Winter Quarter at its meeting last night, following funding guidelines passed on Nov. 3. The new guidelines place a quarterly funding cap of $450 on existing media orgs and $200 for new orgs.
Following the recommendation of Associate Vice President of Student Orgs Carli Thomas and Vice President of Finance and Resources Andrew Ang, council allocated the maximum $450 to 10 media orgs and $200 to the new media org Robot Report.
Thomas said she is working on creating funding caps for all student organizations.
She added that she designed the funding guidelines to prevent overallocations, but hopes it will it motivate media organizations to become independent.
“This was painful, actually, I know how much work goes into [media],” Thomas said.“[But] I don’t like to think of myself as a piggy bank.”
Thomas said the current funding model is based on a similar program at UC Riverside and other UC schools. According to UCR Organization Funding Specialist Maggie Godinez, Riverside gives a flat $750 to all organizations. There is no specific funding for media, and anyone who wants to publish must independently make up the costs in membership dues and fundraising.
But Joe Trotten, business manager and former editor of Riverside’s official student newspaper The Highlander, said the funding model caused problems for student publications.
Trotten said that Riverside has had only three major undergraduate newspapers in the last decade. Of these, Nuestra Cosa, a Chicano culture publication, has been printing since 1972. Two others, The Praetorian and The X Factor, lasted less than two years.
“Student are really enthusiastic at the beginning, but with staff turnover and looking for financing they don’t last very long,” Totten said. He added that even when they were operating, The X Factor and The Praetorian only printed once a quarter.
Media org leaders said the guidelines will hinder new papers from being started on campus.
Mania Magazine Editor in Chief Steve Bass said bigger publications like his can weather the cuts since Mania has an established audience that will help them court advertisers. But he added that it will be difficult for first-timers who have nothing to show, and that this will cause a lot of alternative voices to be silenced.
“If anybody wanted to start something up that they felt was really urgent, it’s going to be really hard for them,” Bass said. “It’s going to make UCSD a much more one-dimensional campus.”
New publications will have to get creative in how they publish, he said, and UCSD newspapers and magazines should help each other out.
“I appreciate that in the past we’ve gotten everything from A.S. that we needed, or that we wanted,” Bass said. “So now that it’s over I’m not outraged. And from what I’ve seen, getting pissed can be entertaining, but it doesn’t really get much done — it’s not going to help Mania at all.”
California Review Editor in Chief Alec Weisman said he thinks media orgs should be self-sufficient, but it is unfair that the students are paying into a system that doesn’t support them.
“We shouldn’t have to go and beg to get our money back,” Weisman said.
Thomas said media orgs can still request funding from the council’s operating budget. She added that the caps may be raised in the future, depending on the council’s finances.
Weisman said he fears that a precedent has been set the council will have little incentive to change it.
“The institutional memory at UCSD is nil,” he said.
Readers can contact Justin Kauker at [email protected].