AS senate approves funding for The Collegian

By MAGGIE THACH

Students will have no problem voting for The Collegian student fee referendum next week, Associated Students election Commissioner Deborah Napoleon said.

The ballots in this year’s election will be in a three-column, one-page format.

“We wanted to put The Collegian referendum and the candidates running for office on the same page, not on the back to risk students not seeing it,” Napoleon said. “It’s very clearly marked.”

The Collegian referendum and the amount of money allocated to the publication was one of the issues discussed at the AS meetingThursday.

AS will allocate $49,000 to The Collegian, the same amount it received for the 2004-2005 school year.
Vice president of finance Jennifer Reimer believes the amount is just enough to sustain the publication.

“We want to help them along, but we didn’t want to be the entity that continues growth,” Reimer said. “We want to allow The Collegian to maintain.”

But the Collegian’s business manager, Virginia Sellars-Erxleben, said $49,000 is considerably less than The Collegian’s original proposal.

“They will still need the $49,000 [next year],” Reimer said. “We want to keep [The Collegian] at status quo.”

If the referendum passes, the student newspaper would not receive any funds until the following school year according to AS.

In reality the increase will take effect next school year, as outlined by the California State education code.

“We need that additional money,” Sellars-Erxleben said. “Now we’ll look into applying for additional IRA funding,”

The Collegian referendum proposes that the student body ree be raised by $1.50 in fall 2005 and increased by $1.00 each school year until 2009-2010.

Other issues discussed at Thursday evening’s meeting were public notifications made by Napoleon and election commission member Stephen Trembly.

The election commission set the election petition deadline for April 4 at 3 p.m. but later realized that Election Code 2.1 stated that the deadline is to be set 14 days before the election, extending the deadline to April 6.

But, after a lengthy review, the election commission voted 4-0 that the original deadline would stand and all applications submitted after the April 4 deadline would be turned away. Four applications were denied due to the ruling.

“We wanted to stick to our guns,” Napoleon said. “The date was very well-advertised. We didn’t want to show favoritism. This is the fairest way we could think of.”

Napoleon and Trembly also notified AS of the election commission’s ruling on write-in candidates. To prevent a candidate for running for two offices, the election commission voted to void all write-in votes cast for a candidate listed on the official ballot unless the candidate informed the election commission in writing of his or her desire to withdraw from their candidacy as listed 0n the official ballot.

“We just wanted to avoid problems,” Trembly said. “We’re making sure it’s a fair and equitable election.”

AS elections will be held Apr. 20 and 21 from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Voting booths will be located at the University Student Union, the Satellite Student Union, the Joyal Administration Building and the South Gym.

-Elizabeth Leffall contributed to this article.