For the last two years the Whitman College Pioneer has been funded below nine percent of the total ASWC budget, in blatant disregard of the by-law, which up until Sunday evening called for the Pioneer’s funding to hold steady at nine percent. The by-laws were amended to decrease the budget of the Whitman College Pioneer from nine percent of the total budget to eight percent.

This is roughly a four thousand dollar increase of funds from the previous two years when the Pioneer was short-changed in direct violation of the ASWC by-laws. This by-law changed was proposed by the Finance Committee at the last ASWC joint session, and enjoyed roughly two hours of debate with compromise changes proposed by Senator Bryce McKay, who strongly disagreed with the by-law change, and struck down after members of both the Senate Finance and Policy Committee exhibited strong objections to amending the budget to find the extra funds.

There were many components to the arguments both for and against retaining the current Pioneer budget (and actually funding it at that level). It will come to no surprise to you readers that as a writer for this paper I think that the arguments against properly funding the expansion and improvement of the Whitman College Pioneer were faulty and that the money currently spent on clubs like “friends of gnomes” and “tea club” could be put to far better use improving the level of on-campus discourse and enhancing the public face of Whitman College: which falls well within the stated goals of ASWC.

First of all, as was cited in every single meeting I have sat on regarding the budget, operation costs are rapidly rising in all areas. From bands to viewing rights, to paper, things are monetarily hard all over. Yet, the Pioneer bears the brunt of rising material costs weekly, in addition to maintaining a Web site (which was encouraged by a number of HOCR and Senate members concerned with paper consumption) along with the assorted and considerable costs of creating a competitive staff of writers and expanding coverage and circulation into the Walla Walla community: which many representatives at the session agreed is a positive move. And yet the Pioneer will continue to be funded next year (because their budget is based on a by-law and not the annual request process all other clubs go through) roughly four thousand dollars below what the joint editors-in-chief Sophie Johnson and Andrew Jesaitis requested.

In the words of outgoing (and incoming) Editor-in-Chief Sophie Johnson, the Pioneer is NOT making ends meet on the current budget. While Johnson admits that she would gladly do the job for free, she has in fact funneled chunks of her own money into running the paper this year, which is totally unacceptable.

A couple members of HOCR and the Senate last night suggested that the Pioneer apply for contingency funds when their budget falls short. This of course defeats the purpose of setting a fixed and independent Pioneer budget that allows this paper to critique our wayward student government without fear of budgetary reprisal.

But as a few key Senators have informed me, one of the factors in deciding upon the Pioneer budget and thus the by-law change was the lack of continuous coverage traditionally devoted to ASWC. If this was indeed a factor in the Finance Committees decision, the by-law safeguard did not in fact protect the Whitman College Pioneer.

After much heated debate sophomore Senator Bryce McKay proposed altering the proposed by-law change from eight percent to eight point five percent, increasing the Pioneer’s budget by roughly two grand.

The Finance Committee as a whole was staunchly against this change, as it would require them to reconsider the entire budget and, with last night being the final joint session, possibly have to call yet another session to adopt the budget for the following year. This reporter thinks that perhaps it was a huge mistake to propose such a large decision on the last meeting of the year, as I believe the eight point one percent budget eventually was passed more by exhaustion than by any real consensus.

The Whitman College Pioneer has been funded for consecutive years at below their by-law mandated budget of nine percent. Instead of taking into consideration that the nine percent number was probably arrived at after considerable research from the original drafters of that by-law, that by-law was changed.

While I understand that ASWC is growing in leaps and bounds in all directions, and that there is considerable pressure to A. spend money wisely and B. keep the student fees low(ish), the Whitman College Pioneer is qualitatively different from other ASWC funded endeavors.

While I support the right of clubs such as the essential and redoubtable Whitman Apple Users Group to exist, perhaps there is a better use of a budget traditionally spent on pizza and an iPod shuffle. Perhaps there could be more strident requirements in place for funding all clubs, so the public face not only of ASWC but also of Whitman College, the Pioneer, could be funded at the level its editors assert is necessary to its success.

The level of expertise and discourse displayed in this paper is a indicative of what kind of school we are, and what we as students are striving to achieve. Senators, such as junior Senator Dan Shaw, suggested that the answer to rising costs is trimming the paper down, from its 28 or so pages to eight to ten. Is this what we as students want? The paper is longer because student activity is rapidly expanding on campus. There are more clubs and those clubs are doing noteworthy things, do we want to ignore all but the most impressive in supplication to the almighty dollar?

I say no. We have a paper with the talent pool and the resources to be a great paper, to be an important part of the journalistic landscape if only ASWC would fund its dynamic expansion in both readership and quality. This paper is more than the Back Page, more than the shit show OpEds, more than sensational reports on rape and the greek system, it is our public forum the place where we can talk to each other about problems of the day both on and off campus, where we demonstrate to the world at large what we as a campus care about and how committed we are to those issues.

Not funding the vigorous cultivation of our public discourse is not only against the spirit of the ASWC mission but a total violation of the principles of the liberal arts education.