I’m fairly certain that this amendment is intended to continue to allow multicultural and culturally-based fraternities and sororities to receive SISG status (which they completely deserve). Basically, its preventing SA from doing its thing where they discourage unity in the Greek Community by screwing over the chapters in it who don’t vote for them. The Daily Cal article is here:
http://www.dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=21393

The amendment should just maintain the status quo.

Publications with set yearly expenses can’t survive off donations in the long term. In a college environment, only a few thousand people are going to be truly new every year, meaning you have to tap the same well over and over again with what would amount to much more time spent bothering people to donate than spent actually entertaining them. What I mean is that a group of 10 or 20 students can devote their time and resources to making magazines and newspapers that will entertain 20,000 students, but those same 10 or 20 students would have a hell of a time running a non-stop donation campaign. CalPIRG is one of the few groups that can do it because that’s essentially all they spend their time doing. The nature of Sproul also makes selling issues very, very difficult.

If I thought the ASUC senate were going to fund publications fairly (that is, in my opinion they should be funded proportionate to their benefit to the campus and the number of people who enjoy them, which is strong portion of the campus community), I wouldn’t support this referendum, but year after year it’s become clear that the ASUC is incapable of providing students with the actual student services they want and clamor for.

As a side note, the 1.50 number is essentially the smallest possible referendum that could be placed on the ballot. The ASUC has a lot of internal bullshit that made it frankly impossible to make this fee exactly right, so it was decided to make it as small as they said was possible and to make sure there was no hidden language about inflation or anything else that would let the fee increase in the future.

It’s also the only fee on the ballot that forbids the ASUC from providing any more funding to the beneficiary.

I understand there’s a lot of people who are just never going to support a fee increase and normally I’d be one of them, but in this case I really think it’s the only option to keep this school from losing publications and I think if you spend the time looking at a number of the things built into this referendum (the built-in advertising, the permanently freed up senate funds, the massive increase in quality and availability of student publications through more issues and more infrastructure), it’s really well worth the 1.50.

If people really care, they will donate to it. Duh. If everyone that cared chipped in as much money as it would cost them for their Italian Soda or whatever they get from Cafe Strada every damn day, then let it die. Use the grass roots, dude. The referendum is just lazy.

And, as Ben pointed out, it is easy for groups such as the Patriot and Daily Cal to say no, considering they don’t have to deal with it. Eliminating waste and corruption in government is a laudable goal, but at the same time laughable.

I can’t speak on behalf of the Squelch or any other publications, but I can talk about my experience running this stuff and what it’s taught me.

The funding levels for publications right now are really, truly terrible. I’ve heard a few arguments from people that publications are fine because they’re still producing issues (only in the ASUC could “not going completely bankrupt” be considered “fine”), but producing a thousand issues in a semester for a campus of 33,000 is completely inadequate. Publications are disappearing and dying, and despite aggressive attempts by publications like the Squelch and others to bring their cause to the senate, pubs always seem to be the first on the chopping block because their printing expenses make easy targets. Students like reading student publications, and what’s more, they provide a real benefit to the campus.

Almost every elite university in this country has a signature publication. Harvard, Stanford, Penn, Brown, Yale, etc… all have humor magazines and other publications that are as old as the universities themselves. They’re part of what attract people to those schools. They’re one of the many seemingly trivial things that set a great university from a middling one.

Writers of a lot of movies and tv shows have come straight from these publications, and they form alumni networks back to their old school.

I know there’s a lot of waste going on in other places, but there are very few groups on campus who truly serve the campus at large, and publications are one of those groups. I’m not trying to bad mouth other groups; I’m just saying that unlike a lot of groups, publications by their very nature are meant to serve the entire campus. They’re meant to reach and entertain everyone.

This 1.50 fee will save the Squelch in particular as the university’s largest student funded and run magazine, and it’ll also produce much needed funds for basic infrastructure improvements needed by all the publications.

I know a lot of people want to say “Can’t you just be more efficient?” but the frank answer is no. If you’re already selling thousands of dollars in advertising an issue and already printing on low quality paper most publications at other university’s wouldn’t wipe their ass with, there’s nothing that’s going to magically make up for funding cuts and increased printer costs.

So anyway, I respect all the arguments against the fee; I’m just saying I think for that small 1.50 investment, the potential benefit to the campus is going to far outweigh the costs, and without the fee, I see no reason why student publications won’t continue to disappear and publish fewer and fewer issues until eventually no one even remembers they’re there.