Media Funding Regains Spotlight

Old animosities flared up at last night’s A.S. meeting, as student publication reps expressed anger over budget cuts and an initiative to defund the Koala.

Members of the California Review accused former Campuswide Senatorial candidate Cody Marshall of trying to hurt media orgs after finding an e-mail he sent to the Student Affirmative Action Committee listserv. The e-mail presents a plan to defund the Koala by creating dummy orgs meant to force council to alter its funding guidelines. Marshall, along with former A.S. President Utsav Gupta and former Campuswide Senator Josh Grossman, have already registered at least 89 such organizations.

“Some of us have developed a plan to force A.S.’s hand in being more critical of the way that media organizations are funded on campus,” the e-mail reads. “This could potentially provide an avenue through which we can get the Koala defunded. […] We are gonna make them take a second look at the way they fund media by creating over 100 random media organizations that will all receive funding! Once they realize that their system is broken, they will have to pick and choose orgs to fund, with the controversial Koala surely being among one of the top newspapers to be contested.”

Marshall said that it was only implied that his plan was to defund the Koala and that he meant to spark a conversation about media funding.

“I think it’s more of just a way to have a discussion about the funding model, and [if] we want to fund all media organizations, regardless of any particular criteria… like, what constitutes a legitimate media org for funding,” he said. “Plus, as a UCSD student, I have the right to access funding to orgs.”

SAAC Vice Chair Josue Castellan stressed that — although the e-mail was sent to the SAAC listserv —  the plan was not supported by its members.

“SAAC had nothing to do with this,” he said. “I know a lot of media orgs are here today, and I just want to make it clear that we are not trying to take away your funding, we’re not talking about that at all, we have other issues to work on.”

The e-mail continued by asking members of SAAC to join, since each org needs a minimum of four members. It added that “you don’t have to produce actual media; just sign up with your PID. It takes about 20 seconds for each org.”

A.S. President Wafa Ben Hassine said, since it is the Center for Student Involvement and not A.S. Council that approves student orgs, the 89 organizations cannot be unapproved. However, no funding has been allocated for next quarter yet, since funding requests are usually not registered until Week Seven.

“We decide how to fund, not who to fund,” Vice President of Finance and Resources Andrew Ang said. “We determine all the different ways of saying yes, but we have no way of saying no.”

Associate Vice President of Student Orgs Carli Thomas said that she has been working on a new set of media guidelines which will not allow false orgs to be funded.

“These 89 or so papers are certainly welcome to be student orgs, but they are not guaranteed funding under the new guidelines,” she said.

The guidelines will be finalized Oct. 29.

Also at the Oct. 26 meeting, California Review member Chris Eager called for sanctions against Marshall, Gupta and Grossman. He claimed that their actions fall under A.S. jurisdiction regarding non-academic dishonesty, and requested a trial for the three members in front of the A.S. Judicial Board “for violating UCSD policies which student orgs are bound by.”

Another source of contention was the  media allocations in the new executive budget.

Though Ang initially proposed a media budget of $60,000 — and allocated accordingly — the revised budget passed last week adjusted the number to be $38,000. Since $25,784 has already been allocated to the media orgs for Fall Quarter, this leaves $12,000 left for the orgs to use in the remaining two quarters.

According to Thomas, this means that the media orgs will need to scale back their publishing. Thomas said her new media guidelines will include funding caps, though she is unsure of specifics regarding how the change in funding will affect the orgs, or whether it will be an across-the-board cut.

Weisman said he was concerned at A.S. Council’s priorities in allocating money.

“They didn’t need to take the funds the way they did,” Weisman said. “They messed up on the budget and taking it away from student media and student orgs is not where the money should be going.”

Despite protests from Weisman and representatives from other media orgs — including the MQ and Mania Magazine — Ang said that more money will not be allocated.

“We are working with the budget we have,” Ang said. “We need to adhere to fiscal responsibility and not add to or change the budget arbitrarily.”

Additional reporting by Regina Ip.


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