August 4, 2010 To the members of the Student Services Fees Review Committee, I want to thank you all very much for taking the time to hear input from our, and many other student groups on campus. We take student service fees very seriously at The Minnesota Daily and we appreciate the opportunity to help improve the process of how they are awarded. Hopefully, come Spring Semester, the findings of your committee will make everything run more smoothly than it did in recent years. I have tried my best to answer your questions as clearly as possibly but if you have anything further, please feel free to contact me at any time. I want to make sure to emphasize my support of Jerry Rinehart’s recommendation to this committee that the “one size fit all” model is not well suited deciding student service fees, especially for administrative groups like the Minnesota Daily. I’d like to see next year's Fees Committee avoid sweeping figures or proportions and instead consider the financial needs of student groups on an individual basis. Thank you again, Thomas Q Johnson President and Co-Publisher The Minnesota Daily [email protected] cell: 507-340-2729 direct: 612-435-2765

What do you think student service fees money should be used for? The Student Services Fees Committee (SSFC) is a group of students deciding how money collected from students should be used by students, for students. Because of this unique arrangement, I believe the committee’s primary focus should be on how best to use the finite amount of money they’ve been given to enrich student life on campus. There are a number of ways to judge how “enriching” a student group is, by the standards of the Student Development Outcomes for example. The only suggestion I have to offer to the SSFC is to have a broader definition of being engaged than just holding events. The Minnesota Daily does not hold very many events on campus – not yet – but it still provides an unmatched forum for student conversation and information about the University, aside from being an excellent training institution for its employees. I feel the same is true for many other organizations, that they are active and provide a valuable service but just don't have a focus on holding events. This should not be held against organizations as hard as it has been in recent years. Should there be limits set externally (e.g., by the OSA, by the fees committee) to how it is allocated within a student organization?

The SSFC should not impose external restrictions on how student groups spend their money. The Minnesota Daily’s budget is set and managed by the Office of the Publisher, the Daily Board of Directors and by our own Finance Department. Everything in it is thoroughly researched in a much greater depth than anyone can understand just visiting the budget once a year. Though undoubtedly the SSFC has a right to see that budget, question the merits of it and include their judgment in their recommendation, but it should not try to write our budget. Giving SSFC members the power to effectively change organizations by tying funds to internal allocation raises a number of ethical issues as well, especially for a news organization like the Daily. I don’t believe it is the responsibility of the SSFC to decide how they’d like to see the organization spend its money, but rather it is to assess the merits of the request being presented and make recommendations accordingly. Setting limits externally also falls into the “one size fits all” trap that, as said before, is an inappropriate way of addressing the variety of needs different student groups have.

How important do you think it is for fees applications to be turned in on time? Should this be a hard and fast rule, or should it be flexible? What criteria would you use to judge whether a group should be able to participate in the process after turning in a late application? Turning in fees applications on time should be stressed during the fees process, especially given the volume of submissions that the committee must consider. That said, having extremely rigorous deadlines can also hurt the students of the U by denying a possibly valuable service for a simple mistake. An appeals process that would allow the group to show that a sizable amount of students support their exception, via petition, would be a fair way to handle late requests. Regardless of how these rules will be decided for next year, it seems just as important that they be well publicized and uniformly enforced to reduce confusion.

What is the importance to the Minnesota Daily of autonomously determining its reserve requirements? Why should the Minnesota Daily be exempt from standards imposed on other student groups?

The Minnesota Daily tries to maintain our reserves equal to the cost of between six and 12 months of publication. Especially in an industry as newspaper publication, we feel that this level is appropriate to ensure sustainability of our organization though it often is over 10% of our annual budget. A low reserve makes us unstable and by necessity results in downsizing – employing fewer student workers with lower compensation, producing a fewer number of papers with fewer pages – in order to compensate. The Daily has downsized significantly in the past few years to make up for decline in ad sales. In the few years prior to last year’s SSFC decision, we cut 35% - approximately $600,000 - of our operating budget and as a result asked for more money in student service fees to help begin to regain some of our losses. The SSFC criticized us for not cutting more deeply into our reserve accounts, what we, our auditor, and numerous newspaper professionals agreed was an irresponsible move. We aim for stability, meaning that we spend less when we have less and avoid leaning on our reserves too heavily to make up the difference. The SSFC's decision showed poor judgment and many people at the Daily were very disappointed at the SSFC's lack of insight into business practices. Yes, we are a student group, but we are also our own 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that produces a product. The Minnesota Daily needs to be exempt from the standards imposed on other student groups in order for our business to fuction.

Why and how does the Minnesota Daily rely on professional staff? How do restrictions on student services fees expenditures on staff affect your operations? Are paid workers (staff and students) an absolute necessity for your organization? What changes in these areas do you suggest? All 200+ annual employees of the Minnesota Daily are students with no exceptions. Every reporter, editor, salesperson, ad designer, from the front desk staff to the Office of the Publisher are students at the U. We rely heavily on these men and women to make up our professional staff and it goes without saying that they are an absolute necessity to our organization. Very few college newspapers in the United States can say that, but we can and we are very proud of that fact. We strive to employ the best and the brightest on all levels and many of our students have no other jobs other than the Daily because of the dedication, time and love it requires. For this reason we compensate our student workers very fairly. Not to mention the quality of work from our student workers is excellent. A change in our ability to compensate our employees as we see fit, I fear would affect the quality of our newspaper and would make it very difficult for students to find work there. If a group requests funding and is awarded below their requested level, how do you think this should be handled? It should be handled fairly. Student groups should have the ability to appeal their funding levels back to the Committee and to the Vice-Provost of Student Affairs if necessary. Do you think a group should get more funding than what it spends? If yes, how much more should it be able to save for use in other years?

A group should receive the funding that it can demonstrate is appropriate. I cannot comment on whether that appropriate amount should be greater than what the group spends without knowing which group it is. For many student groups, the need to maintain reserve accounts and save some of its funding is not necessary, but for some it is.

In your group’s estimation, please outline briefly what works well in the current fees process, and what does not work well. What improvements can you suggest? The current fees process is more than decent. The decisions of the SSFC are usually well explained, the appeals process is fair and usually the whole thing runs very smoothly. It would be nice to see greater lengths taken to ensure that the members of the committee are as free as possible from personal bias and predisposition towards certain groups. It's unavoidable in some sense, but I hear that has been an issue with the SSFC in the past.