Use the $4 that won’t be tacked onto your student fee this year to buy yourself something nice.
The Michigan Student Assembly voted down a resolution last night that would have placed an initiative on the ballot in March’s presidential elections to add $4 per year to undergraduate’s tuition bills.
The additional revenue would have been used to fund the Michiganensian, the University’s yearbook.
MSA voted not to carry the resolution by a vote of 8, for 14 against and 3 abstainations.
Michigan Progressive Party presidential candidate Rese Fox proposed the resolution.
With elections looming close, the debate over the resolution was heated between the dominant Students 4 Michigan party and the newly formed MPP.
The MPP supported the resolution to put the funding option on the ballot.
“Students are more than capable of making the decision about the Michiganensian on their own,” Fox said in an e-mail to The Michigan Daily.
S4M took the opposite stance.
“As a student I am in favor of my money going to the yearbook, but as an MSA rep it’s irresponsible to vote to fund one organization and not 300 others. I am against preferential treatment,” S4M vice presidential nominee Justin Paul said after the meeting.
Tension at the meeting increased just prior to the vote, when an S4M member questioned Fox’s personal relationship with Michiganensian editor in chief Emily DeMarco.
Fox then told the assembly for the first time that she was in a sorority with DeMarco.
S4M party chair Robbie O’Brien accused Fox of “cronyism” and said it could be a reflection of her party as a whole.
“The fact that I know Ms. DeMarco does not change the fact that students should have been able to vote on this issue,” Fox said.
There was also contention over a petition to put the increase on the ballot, signed by 1,000 students, that Fox presented to the assembly.
The assembly deemed the signatures inadmissible because the petition had not cleared MSA standards prior to the signings.
The petition sheets read, “Petition to get Michiganensian fees on student tuition” and failed to print an actual question, leading some MSA members to question the validity of the signatures.
Ally Jacobs, chair of MSA’s Communications Committee, and several other S4M members said it would be “irresponsible” to put the question on March’s ballot because students would not have the background knowledge to make an informed decision.
O’Brien said it is important to note “the (Michiganensian’s) history of not being able to spend their money right.”
According to Michiganensian marketing manager Katrina Deutsch, one year ago the Michiganensian had a $36,035.43 debt because fewer yearbooks were sold than were projected.
Deutsch said the yearbook has an uncertain future and therefore had “nothing to lose” by asking MSA to put the initiative on the ballot.
Deutsch said if the resolution had passed and students had approved it, the money would have provided a book for every student free.
Although asked to, yearbook representatives could not present a budget at the meeting to explain how the plan would be feasible.
Other schools, including the University of Notre Dame and Michigan State University, fund their yearbooks through student fees.
The programs work because that many students don’t pick up a yearbook, but all others pay the fees.
Deutsch said the Michiganensian plans to propose the resolution again for next year’s ballot.