Tuesday night at the UMR Student Council meeting, it was decided that 1/3 of The Missouri Miner's student funding be cut for the 2007-2008 school year. The reasons ranged from spelling errors to occasional factual error, to just plain not liking The Miner, which should not come into a decision like this. In addition, the entire process for coming to this decision was poor, as these cuts were not discussed at the open forum held so that students could talk about their concerns. And we had 8 minutes, between two people, to defend ourselves against the untruths being spoken at the Student Council meeting.

"We don't want to try and tell you how to run you're paper," the Student Council President said. However, it is hard to see anything else than a student government censor-ship at this point.
In addition, the Student Council President as well as specific members of the Student Activity Fee Board have told us over and over again that paying our writers minimum wage, if anything, is not necessary. While legally, we might not have to because our funding comes from students, there are very few people who would work for less than minimum wage. No one should have to. Currently the editorial board members all put in at least twice the hours they are paid for. We already don't make minimum wage. For the nearly 40 hours a week I put in, I make about $85 each week. No more, no less.

Student Council used an example that MIT does not pay their newspaper (and we are NOT at MIT level, though they can dream). Though the newspaper is my passion, it is not that for everyone, especially at an engineering school where about 95% of our employees are engineers, or science and technology program. Most have this job for a little extra cash in their pockets at the end of the week. And for the amount of work they put in, almost all of them deserve it.

The Missouri Miner feels that we being punished for having in the past, shown campus information that many people did not want out in the public arena (like a good newspaper does). Unfortunately, we do that with spelling or grammatical errors sometimes as well, just as every other newspaper in the world does occasionally. No one is perfect, nor should they be expected to be.

Cutting 1/3 of our student funding will lead to the downfall of the newspaper within a matter of years. One of our current options is going independent of the University. What that would mean is a lot of funding very fast. I don't know how possible that is though.This would cause the university to have no content control over our newspaper. We also fear that such a move will cause other retaliation such as the loss of our student office.

I don't expect everyone to care about UMR's newspaper because in all honesty, many people who read this have very little with it at all. But we are treading in mucky waters which I fear any student funded newspaper or media organization will fall into if they don't tread lightly around student council, administration, etc. No newspaper should have to tiptoe around big stories or leave them out of the newspaper.

They are, by taking away 1/3 of our budget, threatening our freedom of speech. This must not be kept quiet.