Western Oregon Journal

Issue date: 10/19/07 Section: Headlines

Last week the Journal decided to run an e-mail from the Vice President for Student Affairs, Dr. Gary Dukes, on the cover of the issue with an Editor's note. Dr. Dukes wanted to talk to the Journal's interim Adviser concerning a statement that was printed on the cover of the last issue. The statement read, "student owned and operated, printing the unabashed truth," in reference to the Western Oregon Journal. The e-mail outlined all of the reasons why the statement was incorrect and instructed that, "the statement needs to be removed or changed."

In the e-mail, Dr. Dukes claimed that the Journal was not the property of the students but of the university, since "they also use the university network, university staff for accounting, fall under and use the university insurance, utilize the university's tax exempt status, and many other aspects that don't make [the Journal] student owned."

These are facts that the Journal is not disputing. The Journal currently uses the university network for the production of the paper, but only for the remainder of this academic year. Editor in Chief, Gerry Blakney, explained that, "the Journal is in the process of switching all our files to an off-campus site, that will protect the university, and more importantly the Journal, from incidents such as when the University administration and Campus Public Safety broke into the Journal, after hours, to search our files."

Blakney continued by saying, "the Journal does fall under the university's tax exempt status, but that is not a 'Western only' thing; all public universities are protected under federal guidelines, but the Journal would still be tax exempt because of our not-for-profit status regardless of Western," Blakney said. "What I am more concerned with is who actually 'operates' the Journal. And the answer to that, my friends, is students."

According to Darin Silbernagel, Director of Business Services, Student Media provides 89 percent of the Journal's funds, through the Incidental Fee Committee (IFC). The other 11 percent is raised by the Journal through advertising.

The IFC is comprised of nine students, three appointed by the university president, three appointed by the Associated Students' president and three additional students are elected at large during Spring term. The monies collected by the committee become university property in that they are stored and allocated through university bank accounts.

Western Oregon Journal Managing Editor, Ashley Erb says, "Regardless of where [the funds] are stored; the students, and not the state, actually pay the fee and, in turn, pay for the Journal. The majority of the university is student owned."

Continued...

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