News

SBC shaves pun/ctum, equestrian budgets

In print | April 2, 2009

Correction Appended

This month the Student Budget Committee cut the budgets for the recently chartered photography magazine pun/ctum and the Swarthmore Equestrian Association. The SBC also decided to grant a less than requested budget amount for the writing and arts magazine Night Café.

Student Groups Adviser Chris Green ’09 said that these groups’ funding last year didn’t come from SBC’s normal operating budget. When groups don’t spend all their money their “rollover” goes to a “capital replacement fund,” which is used when SBC-owned capital breaks and needs to be replaced, such as the Student Council vans and the Swarthmore College Computer Society video and computing equipment.

According to Green, Paul Apollo, last year’s Student Groups Adviser, suggested that with an already tight budget, SBC could for one year only fund these three groups through the capital replacement fund. It would be fiscally irresponsible to do this each year, however, because rollover money is variable and used in a good way already, Green said.

Student Council President Yongjun Heo ’09 agreed.

“[Last year’s Chartering Committee] chartered them with the understanding that it’s not going to be sustainable to keep all three groups because their budgets were so large,” Heo said. “[This year] we had to evaluate which groups contributed more, how they contributed, how they can continue contributing more without additional funding, and how they can contribute more if their funding was cut.”

This past year, pun/ctum, which published one issue each semester, had a budget of about $12,000 while the Swarthmore Equestrian Association had a budget of approximately $9,000. The budgets were reduced to roughly $6,500 and $6,000, respectively. Night Café’s budget stayed at around $6,000.

Green, who serves as Student Groups Adviser on SBC, Student Council and the Chartering Committee, said that at the beginning of spring budgeting each year SBC sets a “benchmark” of money that they decide to allocate to groups.

“By the end of spring budgeting, SBC had over-allocated approximately $20,000 and had to make cuts to bring the budget back to our benchmark,” Green said in an e-mail. “The budget cuts for those three groups happened in the course of spring budgeting; they came in, proposed budgets, and were approved or denied just like all the other 100+ groups. Consequently, the 20K over the benchmark happened after initial funding decisions were made for those [groups].”

The Chartering Committee met with these three clubs on March 2. Heo and Green said that while Night Café and the Swarthmore Equestrian Association were “flexible” to decreased or stagnant budgets, pun/ctum was not open to the idea of having one publication each year instead of one each semester.

The Chartering Committee renewed Night Café and the Swarthmore Equestrian Association’s one-year charters, but chose not to renew pun/ctum’s. Though the committee can make these decisions, SBC decides all groups’ final budgets.

After Green told pun/ctum through an e-mail that they were not re-chartered, pun/ctum appealed to Student Council and were rechartered. This was under the condition that they would work under a smaller budget, however.

Pun/ctum Editor-in-Chief Cheryl Tse ’09 said that the magazine was originally perceived to be inflexible because it “wanted to keep true to the original vision and values of the magazine.”

Managing Editor Linda Wang ’09 agreed.

“We felt like we should be defensive,” she said. “We wanted to maintain a semesterly magazine because we felt that was the whole point of having pun/ctum magazine … to support the printed publication.”

Since the baseline printing cost for one issue is $4,000, Wang didn’t find it “unreasonable” for the magazine to have roughly $12,000 for two issues, she said.

Though Green said that the most important reason to cut pun/ctum’s budget was because it was high, he added that there were other reasons.

“The Chartering Committee had gotten the impression … that members of the Swarthmore community were not as pleased with the publication as we had hoped,” said Green. There were concerns that the layout and quality of photos were poor, that there were not many photos presented and there were not many students who were participating, he added.

Wang said that there was a misunderstanding between what the Chartering Committee saw and pun/ctum’s vision for the magazine. For example, the “intentionally minimalist” layout explained why photos seemed spread-out through the magazine: “We’re not going for a catalogue of photos. We’re going for a photo magazine that gives respect,” she said.

Wang also disagreed with the claim that pun/ctum was not connected to the college community.

“We’ve always stressed that this magazine is about community and collaboration and having everyone working together to make it as good as possible,” she said. In addition to submissions from photography students, pun/ctum also received work from alumni, some of whom had completed MFA programs. The magazine was always open to feedback, soliciting comments from faculty and students, Wang added.

After the magazine’s charter was not renewed, however, its members became more flexible when appealing to Student Council. Next year, pun/ctum will only have one magazine, but Wang said that it will be bigger and have a higher quality than either of the semesterly magazines this year.

Though she expressed concern that “not everyone is going to be aware that we’re only accepting submissions for one publication,” Wang said that she is relieved the group has funding for the future.
Not renewing a group’s charter is not as harsh as it sounds, Heo said.

“It’s not just this slap in the face … it’s not to close down an organization or a community. [With pun/ctum] it wasn’t that we were saying … we don’t want a photography community,” he said. “One thing that’s beneficial with [not renewing a charter] is that it allows for new people who are interested in the same things to restructure their organization in a new way.”

Green added that even though “it was a really difficult decision … sacrifices had to be made.”

Green and Heo said that they were concerned with the Equestrian Club that they were only partially subsidizing the $40 hourly cost for riding.

This year students had to pay half of the riding cost for the roughly 10 rides. Now with the budget cuts, Heo said that the first four or five outings will be paid for by the budget, and students will pay the rest.

Co-captains Kim Comer ’09 and Esther Burson ’10 are, however, still concerned about these budget cuts.

Comer said that though the first four lessons are now free, students still have to pay because they have to commit to a full semester. Burson, who is taking over leadership when Comer leaves, said in an e-mail that she’s concerned that “we’ll be hard pressed to fund everyone.”

“It’s scary to think that all our efforts might come to nothing and the club might fall apart because of lack of financial support,” said Burson, who is abroad this semester. “My plan for the future is to hope that the numbers work out and we pull through the hard times.”

Since the budget is expensive, however, Heo said that part of the stipulation with the budget cut was that the participants would be capped at around 30.

Founder of Night Café Eli Epstein-Deutsch said that though there weren’t really major cuts this year, the magazine’s $6,000 budget isn’t enough to fund the hoped-for four issues per year. The magazine asked for around $9,000 as a high-end request likely for revision, he said. Epstein-Deutsch added, however, that the magazine is getting a website and may post some content online only.

This year the magazine published two larger issues; treasurer Emma Ferguson ’10 said that there will likely be three issues next year.

Ferguson added that artwork will probably not be printed in color.

Correction: April 6, 2009

Correction: This article incorrectly stated that pun/ctum’s budget was cut to $8,000. Pun/ctum’s budget was actually reduced to $6,500.