I read in the March 21 paper that Jerry Thompson said, “The SA does not want to fund (The Northern Star) because (it) reports on and criticizes the student government.” Is that really the only reason the SA opposes a mandatory student fee for the Star? Perhaps I might suggest a few others.

First, there seem to be several unanswered questions involving the use of the funds. A 10-cent-per-credit-hour student fee would generate more than $50,000 per year. What exactly does the Star plan to do with all this money? Thompson said the money would be “directed toward the increasing costs associated with the paper’s operations.” Why does the Star need $50,000 when it has all its advertising revenue? If memory serves me, one of the things Clyde Wingfield accused Thompson of a few years back was mismanagement of funds. Perhaps the Star might want to open its books to the SA and to any interested fee-paying students, to put to rest any suspicion of malfeasance. Thompson also said the fee “would help fund the proposed 40 cent minimum wage increase.” Excuse me, but my job only pays $3.45 per hour. I don’t want to subsidize a Star reporter’s pay increase any more than I would expect a Star reporter to subsidize mine.

Second, why should any student be willing to give the Star any money at all? Right now, the Star costs nothing, and that’s about what it’s worth. Are students supposed to believe that $50,000 is all that stands between the Star and a Pulitzer?

Third, I take strong exception to the Star’s implicit assertion that it is a more worthy recipient of student money than the proposed campus emergency phone system. A majority of voting students favored a one-time fee to install the emergency phones, hoping their presence would reduce the frequency of sexual assault on campus. I wonder whether a majority of students would vote for a permanant subsidy for the Star. The Star’s contradictory statements on the phone question probably didn’t win it many friends.

Finally, it seems a little hypocritical for a newspaper that last spring was running ads contrasting its lack of student fee support with WKDI’s dependence on SA funds to now come begging for student money. You’d have to find something else to put in that space in the middle of page 5 of the March 21 paper, where it now it says, “Your free Northern Star …”

Dean Kidd

history/classics