The Student Federation will vote today on whether to reduce the budget of the Tower Light, Hillsdale College’s student literary journal. The proposed cut will remove 33 percent, or $3,950, of next year’s overall Tower Light budget – 40 percent of what it allocates for printing.
This proposed cut comes on the heels of a Student Fed-sponsored survey that was intended to ascertain the levels of readership for publications on campus.
Eighty-six percent of students said they read The Collegian, while 30 percent said they read the Tower Light and the Winona in a recent Student Fed survey with 391 respondents, according to junior David Wilhelmsen, Student Fed president.
“I support matching the amount of copies for the readership on campus,” Wilhelmsen said. “With what we’re proposing, there will still be enough for 50 percent of campus to have a copy.”
Junior Josh Andrews, who will be editor-in-chief of the Tower Light for the 2014 spring semester, expressed doubts about basing cuts on a one-time survey.
“It’s difficult to gauge how many people are really reading the Tower Light every semester,” Andrews said. “It doesn’t even take into account the people who just pick it up, even to look at the pictures, or the visiting writers who want to see students’ work.”
The proposed cuts are part of a larger plan developed by Student Fed, which hopes to take money saved and return it to students in the form of a 15 to 20 percent refund on their student fees at the end of the school year, Wilhelmsen said.
Each year, students pay fees, part of which are given to the federation to allocate as it sees fit. Some of those fees are set aside to fund the three official student publications: the Tower Light, the Winona yearbook, and The Collegian.
Junior Student Federation Representative Viktor Rozsa said he was unsure of the constitutionality of the proposed plan.
“The way I see it, Student Fed is charged with allocating funds. The option of refunding doesn’t seem to be something we have the authority to do,” Rozsa said.
Maria Servold, assistant director of the Dow Journalism Program and student publications adviser, said the federation’s proposed Tower Light cut goes against its mission.
“Wilhelmsen believes his role is to tighten the budget and save money for students,” Servold said. “I read their constitution. It says, ‘The organization, known as the Hillsdale College Student Federation, shall exist to allocate student fees for the purpose of improving campus life… and, to support the College in its mission of calling students toward the active cultivation of intellectual and moral excellence.’ To me, that means giving money to the Tower Light.”
Assistant Professor of English Dutton Kearney weighed in on the issue.
“The Tower Light is important because it provides students with a venue to learn how to enculturate what they’ve learned here,” Kearney said. “ For its content and for its graphic design, I would put the Tower Light up against any student literary publication in the nation.”
Wilhelmsen said that the cuts are intended to reflect the mission of the college.
“What I support and what every other officer supports is to decrease student fees and return the money back to the students,” Wilhelmsen said. “They should be very excited to see the student government embody the principles of the college. We want to provide services as efficiently as possible and return what we don’t need.”
Servold disagreed with Wilhelmsen’s perception of the mission of Student Fed.
“I think their job is to spend the money given to them in an appropriate way,” Servold said.
Junior Aaron Schepps, who will serve as the Tower Light’s editor-in-chief during the 2013 fall semester, said he was both surprised and bewildered by the proposed cut.
“The budget was cut before asking me how the Tower Light is made,” Schepps said. “The way I perceive a budget to be built is to say, ‘Hey, here’s how much we used, here’s how much we want to use next year.’ Instead, I was told, ‘You are going to cut 33 percent.”
Wilhelmsen said that the Tower Light would have the ability to return at the beginning of the new school year and request additional money from the discretionary fund.
Rozsa questioned the necessity of the cuts, especially for a publication like the Tower Light.
“Why do we need to cut the budget?” Rozsa said. “We’re not hurting for money. Instead, we’re using it to create a work of art.”
Kearney said the Tower Light is an important facet of the college’s arts education.
“Student poets, writers, photographers, and graphic designers produce the publication. They attend lectures and workshops led by our robust Visiting Writers Program,” Kearney said. “Students then imitate those successful poets, novelists, and essayists—and they do so in a conscious conversation with the curriculum of the College.”
Schepps also worried that the quality of the Tower Light would suffer if the new cuts were made official.
“The Tower Light has increased immensely in quality over the years,” Schepps said. “I did a lot of looking at other top literary journals and subscribed to professional journals, and the Tower Light is very competitive.”
Wilhelmsen said the quality of the Tower Light is not at stake.
“They claim that the quality will drop, but it doesn’t make sense. Just produce less copies of the same thing. We don’t want to damage the ability of the Tower Light to produce their product,” Wilhelmsen said.
Wilhelmsen also expressed a concern that excess copies were going to members of the faculty and of the staff.
“The faculty and staff don’t pay student fees. They’re given copies of the Tower Light on the students’ dime,” Wilhelmsen said. “Our constitution says that the money we use must be for the benefit of the students.”
Schepps noted, among other things, that the publication is used by the admissions department of the college to showcase the skills and talents of current students to prospective students.
Other proposed cuts include a $4,000 reduction in the publication budget for the Winona yearbook, as well as a nearly 50 percent cut in the budget for student planners.
Those who wish to contribute their thoughts to the debate can do so at the Student Fed meeting tonight at 5:00 p.m. in the Knorr room next to the old snack bar.
