The Scribe is not trying to steal anyone’s money

In the media, we strive to be accurate. Sure, sometimes we make mistakes – we are only human. But we do our best to ensure that we get multiple points of view and check our facts and figures carefully.

When dealing with facts on a specific person or organization, we go directly to the source to verify our information whenever possible.

But some information sources seem to be OK with taking faulty information from one source.

The latest weekly newsletter for the Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) – UCCS Chapter was sent out with the subject line reading, “The Scribe Trying to Steal Your Money!!!”

We can assure you, we are not trying to steal your money. And if the YAL would have talked to us before sending out that newsletter, we could have given them all of the facts, and they could rest assured that we are not trying to steal anyone’s money.

Instead, the assertion is based on a quote from SGA President elect Steve Collier: “So, the background story . . . The Media Fee didn’t pass, however, the expenditures tied to what would have been that fee remained. Originally, the Scribe submitted an $80,000 budget. After much debate at Tuesday’s Budget Advisory Committee for SGA, that budget proposal was slashed down to $66,000.”

First, the quote makes it seem as though we are only asking the SGA for money from the Student Activity Fee because the Media Fee didn’t pass. Receiving our funding from the Student Activity Fee is nothing new for The Scribe, though. The SGA has been allocating our funding since 1981.

The Media Fee was intended to give us our own budget so we wouldn’t need to go to the SGA every year to ask for funding. But since it didn’t pass, we are just doing as we’ve always done – submitting our budget to the SGA.

Second, let’s make sure the numbers are correct. The Scribe submitted a budget of $74,970, not $80,000, and the SGA cut that down to $66,920, which is a little more than what we received this year.

We asked for an increased budget for two reasons. The first is that we wanted to put out 30 issues over the course of the year, rather than the 25 we were budgeted for this year. The reason for that is simply to have an issue out for every week classes are in session.

Regardless of how much any entity asks for, the students pay the same amount. The Student Activities Fee is $14 per student. Period. That won’t increase based on the amounts requested by clubs and organizations. It is simply a matter of how it’s allocated, and that changes from year to year.

During the Budget Advisory Committee meeting on April 10, some SGA members suggested cutting down the number of issues to even fewer than 25 in an attempt to move toward a paperless Scribe.

Now, we’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – the student fee does not cover printing costs. And one more time for good measure – the student fee does not cover printing costs.

In order to move toward a paperless Scribe, what we would want to do is put out the same number of issues throughout the year, but make more of them online-only instead of putting out print copies for every issue.

The payroll cost (which the student fee covers) is about the same for an online issue as it is for a print issue. The only person we wouldn’t need to pay would be the distributor – a savings of about $16 per issue. The big difference is that we don’t have to pay to have a paper printed – which the student fee doesn’t cover, anyway! So really, cutting the number of issues is not moving us toward a paperless Scribe, it’s moving us toward no Scribe at all.

The second reason for the increase is to accommodate what Collier, other members of SGA and some students have been asking for – to move toward that paperless Scribe. One way to do that is to develop a mobile app, so we asked for the budget to create one.

Collier went on to talk about the radio budget, saying, “Subsequently, the Radio submitted a budget that jumped from 3,500 to 21,600; that’s a 684 percent increase (insane, if that’s what you’re thinking). That was slashed, from what I understand, down to $12,000, so that’s an average savings of about $21,000.”

Now, we’re all journalists, so math isn’t our strong suit, but we think there may be a problem here. The budget requested was an increase of 617 percent, not 684. We know, that’s not a huge difference, but we like to be accurate. Also, the $21,600 request being slashed to $12,500 is a difference (not a savings, as it is not saving students any money) of $9,100, not $21,000.

As far as the reasons for the increase, we’re not radio experts, so we can’t get into particulars. What we do know is that in order for UCCS Radio to grow and improve, they will need more money for the proper staff and equipment required for those improvements.

If you would like more detailed information feel free to stop by The Scribe office (UC 106) or the Radio Station (in the ROAR office or Dwire 253), and we will be happy to answer any of your questions.

But really, if we want to play the numbers game, we can point out that this year, the YAL received a $1,883.95 increase on their budget of $0 from last year (doesn’t matter that they weren’t a club last year, an increase is an increase). Since a percentage of zero doesn’t exist, we’ll pretend they had a budget of $1. In that case, they’re asking for a 1,884 percent increase on last year’s budget. We know – insane, if that’s what you’re thinking.