My name is Tom, and I represent the Executive Board of Elmhurst College's Student Government. Currently, we control all of our newspaper's funds. The school newspaper has been trying to form an independent board for three years. I realize our system currently is outdated, but it is hard for me and the rest of the board just to give the newspaper its independence. The precedent it could set might cause our power to crumble. What are our options as a student government??
Thanks for the input!
Tom
Responses
Justin, 3/17/2005, 4:21:51 PM
Tom,
What power are you talking about? Do you have some sort of censorship power over the newspaper currently?
Tom, 3/20/2005, 3:40:23 AM
No, we don't censor our paper. Seriously, I am genuinely asking for help.
Thanks.
Tom
Jon, 3/20/2005, 10:20:01 PM
The school newspaper should have an independant board, but that doesn't mean it would be independent. The board--composed of students, faculty or administrators (or, ideally, a combination of all of the above)--could control editorial in chief appointments and paper budgets. Many schools have publications board like these that oversee all student publications. It is advantageous that the paper not be under Student Government control because, if it is, then it creates the impression that any SG coverage is slanted toward SG. (Imagine, for instance, if Bush had control or oversight over all professional newspapers--no one would take the coverage seriously.)
Graham, 3/21/2005, 2:18:29 PM
I was recently elected the first chair of Hamline University's Student Media Board, a board comprised of elected students, the top editors of each media organization (newspaper, yearbook, literary magazine) and their advisers.
In no way did we involve our student congress in the decision of breaking off the media organizations--we just left. Each organization decided to not seek funding from the student congress last year and instead assembled the board based on a draft constitution I wrote myself. In our first year, we struck a deal with the university administration that put us on par with the student congress in terms of setting and collecting our own fee.
Currently, we are in the budgeting process for our first full year (next academic year) under the approved constitution and formalized budgeting procedure.
To give you an idea of a timeline on all this, we first began talking about creating a media board when I was a freshman and working for the newspaper. I am now a senior and we won't have the whole system running exactly as it should until next year. It's been slow going to build a consensus in the admin and the student congress, but once we wrote the constitution, it took about a year to get a temporary board elected, get a first year's budget out the door, publish for a year under the transitional regime, and later this spring we'll be having an open forum where people can address media issues as well as college-wide elections for next year's media board.
The only role congress has played is that it is now cleaning up its own by-laws to remove any mention of us media organizations!
For more info, please email oracle@hamline.edu and we can send you a pdf copy of our media board constitution and offer any helpful pointers you need.
The key, I think, is that the newspaper and other media organizations have to want to be independent. I think we have an ideal situation now, and our main concern is perpetuating the fledgling board so that it continues to have budget authority over the student media orgs and they don't get dragged back under the thumb of the student congress.
