The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate voted on Sunday to reject the Media Advocacy Board's (MAB) request for funding to cover the public editor's salary.
Last year's public editor Jeremy White (LA '09) received a $250 semesterly stipend. MAB recruited for this year's position with the understanding that it would be similarly compensated.
The Senate's decision means that the current public editor Duncan Pickard, a senior, will not receive any payment for his work despite what he had been promised.
A provision for this salary was inadvertently left out of the MAB's nearly $2,500 budget that the Allocations Board (ALBO) approved for this fiscal year.
MAB Chair Scott Silverman, a senior, submitted a request for buffer funding upon realizing that the public editor's salary had not been included in the budget. ALBO discussed buffer funding allocations at a meeting on Nov. 4. MAB's request, according to Silverman, also included provisions for a digital projector and storage cabinets.
Two out of six ALBO members present at the meeting opposed the request outright, taking issue with the public editor's salary, according to TCU Treasurer Aaron Bartel.
Bartel, a sophomore, explained that the debate was centered not on the merits of the position, for which there was general support, but on whether or not it should be paid.
"The general idea is that while ALBO and the Senate appreciate the job the public editor does, we saw it as inappropriate to pay for a student at Tufts to make submissions to any publication," he said.
The MAB introduced the public editor position last year to provide an independent critique of campus publications, hoping to raise standards and inspire a broader discussion on journalistic practices. Commentaries by the public editor are printed in publications such as the Daily and the Tufts Roundtable as independent opinion pieces.
ALBO ended up recommending that the Senate approve the entirety of the MAB's requests except for the public editor's salary, a decision that Silverman chose not to appeal. The Senate passed this recommendation on Sunday.
Pickard indicated that he would not have accepted the position if he had known that it would be unpaid and said he will not continue in the position next semester.
"I've decided that whether or not I get this salary, I will not be the public editor second semester," he said. "Obviously I would rather have a salary, but [the] Senate's decision didn't influence me to not continue with the position."
Though he maintained that the lack of salary was not the sole determining factor in his decision, he said it definitely affected his choice.
"I would think more seriously about doing it if I were being paid," he said. "I'm not quitting position out of protest, but the money not being there is certainly a disincentive."
Bartel said the main rationale for choosing not to fund the position was that there were other students on campus essentially doing the work similar to that of the public editor without payment.
"No other student at Tufts gets paid to write in magazines or newspapers," he said. "We don't pay anyone else to do that and it would unfair for us to pay the public editor."
The fact that the MAB had already promised the salary to Pickard did not factor into the Senate's deliberations, Bartel said.
"We were not really taking into account the fact that it had been promised by the signatory of the group because it's not something that we ever approved or agreed with," he said.
Some senators questioned the MAB's decision not to appeal the recommendation, wondering whether the body really valued the position.
Silverman defended the MAB's decision not to appeal. "I chose not to appeal the decision because I respect the Senate's decisions, and they did grant the other two items in my request," he said.
Freshman Senator Shawyoun Shaidani, a member of ALBO, voted against funding the public editor's salary.
"I felt as if there were many positions on campus, plenty of presidents for example, that have just as much responsibility," Shaidani said.
Both Silverman and Pickard defended the stipend. Silverman believed that it helped attract qualified candidates and kept the public editor accountable.
"It encourages qualified, competitive candidates to apply to the position," Silverman said. "There is also a certain amount of accountability that comes with the position when there is a paid salary involved."
Pickard also raised the issue of recruiting, pointing out that a senior, perhaps the most qualified for the position in terms of experience and connections, would be most likely to take it if it was paid.
"I think that incentives for seniors to take on another extracurricular activity are very low," he said.
Senator Joel Greenberg, a sophomore, said the offer of a stipend raised the position's standards. "Paying ensures the integrity of the position; if it weren't paid it wouldn't be taken as seriously," he said.
Still, Senator Yulia Korovikov, a freshman, believed that the position could attract quality candidates without a stipend attached.
"I don't see why it's necessary for there to be an incentive," she said. "People who write op-eds do it anyway without an incentive."
White, last year's public editor, echoed this belief, though he was unable to say if he would have taken on the position if it had been unpaid.
"Getting paid was a really nice perk, but no one on campus I know gets paid for the work they do for a publication," White said. "Being part of student media is not because of the compensation but because you believe in what you do. I want to believe that people will still continue to take on the position of public editor even without getting paid."
Pickard said the role of public editor could not be compared to other editorial positions within publications. "This is not necessarily something that will prop up a résumé — it doesn't really have the same weight or the same level of prestige as being editor-in-chief of the Daily, for example," he said.
Senior Adam Weldai, a trustee representative to the Senate, disagreed with the Senate's decision on more procedural grounds. He said the decision highlighted a more general trend of ignoring precedent.
"I supported funding it because it is something that has been funded before. I think the Senate made a very nitpicky decision not to fund it this year," Weldai said. "My biggest concern about a lot of the financial decisions the Senate has made this year is that they did it with no reference to the past."
Bartel said senators decided to fund the position last year as more of a way to prompt interest in what was then a relatively unknown position.
"Some people who supported it as a paid position last year did so more to get it off the ground than for it to be a permanent stipend," he said. "They felt it was appropriate last year but not this year."
Silverman said that the MAB will try to maintain the position without a salary, but he hopes to obtain funding for the position during the next budgeting cycle. Bartel, however, expressed his belief that funding was unlikely to be approved.
