The Ithaca College Student Governance Council passed a bill Dec. 9 to limit the number of copies on-campus publications can print. Two other bills were also passed at the meeting.
The SGC passed the Magazine Sustainability Amendment, the Varsity Athlete Senator Amendment and the Removal of the Senate Affairs Committee Amendment.
The Magazine Sustainability Amendment was sponsored by sophomore Senator-at-Large Maxwell Powers and junior Rup Patel. The bill was co-sponsored by junior Allison Kelley, vice president of business and finance; freshmen Grace Madeya and Henry Wade, Class of 2023 senators; juniors Cole Mistysyn, Jennifer D’Urso and Joseph Pullman; and seniors Adam Justiniano and Patti Banfield, student organizations business coordinator.
The Allocations Handbook previously did not limit the number of copies that on-campus publications could print. The amendment will change the SGC Allocations Handbook to state that the SGC will only fund the printing of 500 copies of on-campus print magazines per issue and a maximum of 1,500 copies per semester.
The Allocations Handbook will also be amended to allow on-campus publications to request funding for their websites. The amendment states that if the publication requests funding for its website, it can only print 750 copies per semester but is still allowed to print 1,500 copies for the academic year.
Article VI, Section B, Subsection III, Subsection F of the Allocations Handbook stated, “SGC will not fund the creation, maintenance, or anything else in regards to an organization’s personal website.”
The amendment will require on-campus publications to create a breakdown of the locations their publication will be distributed and how many are being placed in each location.
Madeya said the reason for the bill was to decrease the amount of paper waste. She said if publications want to print more copies, they can fund them themselves.
Senior Mateo Flores, ministry of cool co-editor of Buzzsaw Magazine, said instead of throwing away extra copies of Buzzsaw Magazine, the editors keep them in an archive and use them in art and in other articles they write.
He said the section of the amendment that said Buzzsaw Magazine assessed their distribution for Fall 2019 is incorrect. He said the Appropriations Committee tabled its budget for the semester when the amendment was introduced, disrupting its production schedule.
“We’ve only been able to run two issues of our magazine,” Flores said. “When we request our operational budget, we try to fund three cycles. Because this bill was introduced to us, our operational budget for this semester was tabled, which threw our production cycle off.”
He said that they cannot collect enough data from just their first issue, Puberty, and do not know how well their second issue, Space, will do, so it is not right to say that they collected data.
Wade said this section was written because of a previous meeting with Buzzsaw Magazine and the Appropriations Committee in which they discussed the fact the Buzzsaw Magazine website saw an increase in readership, so the Appropriations Committee wanted to offset that by decreasing the number of print issues.
Junior Yetunde Smalls, co-editor in chief of Embrace, said she thinks the bill is a start to equity and sustainability for all on-campus publications.
“Certainly, SGC or the Appropriations Committee can make amendments to higher the number, maybe it’s not 1,500, it’s 1,700,” Smalls said. “If you want to start creating an equity thing, I think the best way is to set a number, and I think that’s fair if we’re asking for your funding.”
The amendment was passed with a vote of 9–1, with one abstention.
The Varsity Athlete Senator Position Amendment was sponsored by senior Alex Perry, varsity sports senator.
Perry said his reason for writing this bill was because he is transgender and recently began hormone treatments to begin his physical transition. The college does not have a men’s golf team, and NCAA’s inclusion policy for transgender student–athletes does not allow him to compete with women.
Perry said he is a member of the Student–Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), but because he is no longer on the roster of the golf team, he is an ex-officio member. He said he wants to change the vocabulary of the SGC Constitution to state that any varsity sports senator must also be a member of SAAC.
The constitution previously stated that the varsity sports senator will be determined by their membership on varsity teams. The SGC Senate amended the bill to require the varsity sports senator to serve on SAAC. The bill passed unanimously with a vote of 8–0, with one abstention.
The SGC also unanimously passed the Removal of the Senate Affairs Committee Amendment. The amendment abolished the Senate Affairs Committee with a vote of 7–0, with one abstention.
