The Famuan

Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Josh King Sen. President Mellori Lumpkin (L), Sen. Ricquel Jackson (Top Right) and Sen. Jonathan Pierre (Bottom Right) discuss SJGC funds in an emergency meeting.

The School of Journalism and Graphic Communication was allotted $31, 000 to fund its student media at an emergency Senate meeting held Feb. 13.

The $31,000 will go toward funding The FAMUAN newspaper staff and 90.5 WANM-FM radio station.

"I think it's a good thing because a lot of people don't know what goes into running the radio station and what goes into running The FAMUAN and Journey magazine," said Sean Woods, the WANM operations manager.

The $31,000 will be split between WANM and The FAMUAN. The newspaper will receive more than $16,000 and the radio station will receive more than $14,000.

The money allocated will go toward The FAMUAN and WANM staff salaries.

"We've been trying to get this done ever since we realized were getting a partial allocation for the semester," said SJGC Dean James E. Hawkins.

As a result of the activities and services fees being held at the beginning of the semester, Hawkins had to make a special request for both media firms to be funded.

"We almost immediately reached out to the president and the student senate president to see if we could get some reconsideration for the allocation to our campus media," Hawkins said. "We believe that the campus media serves as a real public service to the student body and that disrupting that service would be detrimental to our operations."

In addition to SJGC receiving funds from the Senate, a final decision was made on the spring election point system for 2008.

In Monday's meeting, the Senate agreed to change the point system of pre-campaigning from 40 points to 50.

Candidates are not allowed to engage in pre-campaigning. Violation of the rules and accumulating 50 or more points are grounds for disqualification from the electoral process.

Because of a disagreement with the electoral commissioner Marva Butler, who wished to keep the point system at 40 points for pre-campaigning, the Senate opted for "middle ground."

"We changed defaming the candidates' ticket points to 45 points and the cups in the fence associated with a candidate or ticket is 30 points," said Senate President Mellori Lumpkin. "We changed it to 50 before (defamation) and this is like the compromise, the middle ground."

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools