Ledger

To the UWT community – I regret to inform you that the Ledger, your independent student paper, will not receive funding for the 2007-2008 academic year.

What does that mean? Well, no funding, no publication.

How did that happen? I missed the deadline for submission of our request for funding. Leaving the application until the last minute was a big mistake. HUGE, as it turns out.

A proposal that is twenty minutes late is the same as no proposal in the eyes of the SAFC and its compliance officer. Is there a grace period? Not this year. Was the SAFC willing to propose an amendment to that policy so the proposal could be accepted for consideration?

Nope. Why?

Why, indeed. It seems the very integrity of the process was at stake. It was a matter of principle. Ethics and all that. And, in the real world, deadlines must be adhered to and rules must be upheld. No one else had a problem following the rules, after all.

The committee was put in a very difficult position, one they did not appreciate. And I, (and by extension the Ledger staff, through no fault of theirs) am being taught a lesson.

And an alternative exists, after all. We have another option, so what’s the big deal?

We can apply for our funding on July 1, the start of the new fiscal year, from the SAFC contingency fund, and the funds that would in all likelihood have been granted to the Ledger during this year’s annual process have been rolled over into that fund. Whew. Crisis averted. That’s a relief. The next SAFC can handle it; the rules have been preserved.

In defense of the members of the committee, I can understand their position – to a point. Past committees didn’t follow procedure and undermined the integrity of the Board.

This year’s committee chose, wisely, to adhere to the timetable and policies of the official SAFC Guidelines and to amend those guidelines to eliminate ambiguities in the language. The process for electronic filing was improved, while the opportunity to submit a hard copy remained for those who were technically challenged. In the interest of full disclosure, this change in the process occurred because my emailed proposal last year was received five minutes after deadline, although it was emailed five minutes before deadline. Hence the predisposition, in my humble opinion, to deny my request for acceptance of a late proposal.

All of which makes perfect sense. But in that process the grace period was eliminated, and that, I maintain, served the purpose of no one, least of all the students to whom the committee is accountable.

Why? Because the Ledger is funded by the student body and it belongs to the student body. To the extent that any student wishes to participate and take ownership, it serves as a learning lab – and an opportunity to gain writing, layout, publishing and business experience.

It is also a limited public forum, a place to express ideas and opinions. The Ledger serves as a mirror for the campus community, an opportunity to consider the culture of UWT, and to call it, and its issues, into question. The editorial board serves as a guardian of the interests of the students, and publishes news about its government, the administration and the organizations and students who make the U the vibrant, living organism that it is. Even when students choose not to participate in its creation or consider its content, the Ledger staff consistently produces a publication that serves to ensure the accountability of those it serves. That includes the Ledger staff, and me.

And the SAFC serves as the guardian of the students’ funds, so you’d think we’d all be on the same page here, working together to spend student funds on a student benefit that no one on the committee disputes is an integral, indispensable and valuable service.

If any other student organization had been denied the opportunity to submit a proposal for funding due to an incomplete or tardy application, the Ledger editors would have written an editorial decrying the actions of the SAFC, because the Ledger serves as the voice and conscience of the student body, and because the overriding mission of the SAFC and the intent of the funding process is to facilitate open and fair consideration of all requests.

A word about the Ledger staff. For the past three years I have had the honor of serving as the publication manager for the Ledger. As an advisor and mentor to the staff I am an active observer in the process of creating a newspaper every two weeks of each quarter. I continue to be impressed that a diverse and ever-changing group of students, with minimal resources and in spite of outside obligations of family, work and studies, manages to produce a quality publication every two weeks.

This often occurs late at night and on weekends – and yes, deadlines are sometimes pushed back in the interest of the larger mission of the paper and sometimes just because things happen. We actually hold the presses on rare occasions when the editorial board believes it serves the best interests of the student body. That’s what we’re here for.

So, all anger-fueled sarcasm and moral indignation aside, here are the lessons I have learned and that I hope

-- The annual budget proposal submission process requires additional fine-tuning if the larger mission of the SAFC is to be served;

-- Advocates of a permanent, independent student press at UWT must seek the adoption of an alternative process of long-term funding of the Ledger budget;

-- The administration must take the lead in facilitating this change because they alone know what actions are necessary to accomplish that goal.

Why? To eliminate the possibility that a lapse in judgment on the part of the paper’s fiscal officer will jeopardize the continuity of funding, and as a commitment to and recognition of the importance of the Ledger to campus community;

For my part, I’ve decided to resign. I have a responsibility to acknowledge the weight and consequences of my actions. More importantly, I’ve chosen to resign to protest the preemptive and simplistic response of the SAFC and its compliance officer to the circumstances in which they were thrust as a result of my late submission.

… Because the very integrity of the process is at stake, and because it’s a matter of principle, after all. Ethics and all that.

And because I believe that in the real world, exceptions to the rules are required to serve the best interests of one’s constituency. It’s what leaders do.

And that, I submit, is the real lesson here.