Readership fund carries surplus

Stacks of the day’s New York Times and USA Today sit in stands in residence halls, classroom buildings and the Indiana Memorial Union every day, waiting to be picked up by news-hungry students.

The papers, provided by the IU Student Association Readership Program, will remain in place until a distributor picks up unused copies, only to replace them with the latest in national news.

Every year since 2005, the University has budgeted $100,000 to pay for the Readership Program, an IUSA initiative offering daily copies of the New York Times and USA Today to students.

However, the program spends significantly less than its budget.

Of the more than $70,000 in the IU Student Association Readership account, about $30,000 was carried over as surplus from last year’s program. That amount has been budgeted by the University specifically for use by IUSA.

However, it is not specified when the surplus funds will be used, only that they will remain in the account until needed.

This means students who paid into the fund last year through their mandatory student fees have yet to reap the full benefits of their contribution.

IUSA representatives said there is minimal oversight on the fund and budgeting from IUSA, and the fund is watched by a single fiscal officer at the University level.

This leaves no one responsible for overseeing the program and its $100,000 budget on a daily basis.

* * *

The Readership Program receives $1.27 from each student out of $94.94 in mandatory student fees each semester, adding up to about $100,000 reserved for the program every year.

A $73,963 cash balance from those fees currently sits unused in the program’s fund, said Melissa Ritter, an RC Fiscal Officer with the Dean of Students Office.

The program’s estimated cost for the 2013-14 academic year is $86,436, according to a contract obtained from IUSA. This is a difference of more than $13,000 from the amount budgeted by the University.

Even with the surplus, IUSA is paying less than the regular stand price for both newspapers, including a free online subscription to the New York Times.

The total expense IUSA pays for the program fluctuates, said Lori Rohde, regional sales manager for Gannett Publishing Services, because the price depends on the number of papers returned to the distributor each day. IUSA is not charged a fee for returned newspapers.

Ritter said the funding, though it has been budgeted for the Readership Program, can be used by IUSA for other ventures if the program ends.

“When this separate fee was created it was labeled as IUSA special projects fund,” she said. “The Readership Program was the first such special project IUSA deemed worthy of spending the funds. 

“However, should IUSA decide to forgo the readership program, they would be allowed to use those funds to support another special project.”
 
* * *

IUSA President Jose Mitjavila said the Readership Program is a separate entity and IUSA is not directly involved in its operation.

When approached with questions about the large surplus, Mitjavila leaned back in his chair with wide eyes.

“That’s a great question,” he said. “That’s news to me.”

The program is now operated by the Committee for Fee Review, led by the presidents of IUSA and the Graduate and Professional Student Organization. Every two years, the CFR evaluates the use and distribution of the mandatory student fees, which fund
various student groups on campus.

Associate Dean of Students Carol McCord oversees the biannual CFR sessions. She said though the Readership Program has been granted funding in recent sessions, four years ago the program was funded only on the condition that it begin to analyze its intake and output.

“If you’re not using these fees to the absolute best possible outcome, we can’t in good conscience require that students pay these,” she said.

McCord said the committee suggested the readership budget be put in a separate special projects fund to keep that amount separate from the IUSA General Fund.

“We don’t want to have IUSA receiving funds that we are earmarking for a particular purpose that they are then spending for something different,” she said.

McCord said she was unaware of the more than $30,000 surplus.

Until recently, IUSA leadership was unable to provide information regarding who was responsible for the special projects fund itself, something Ritter attributed to her own distance from the organization.

Ritter manages and oversees the fund, which was not created until April 2011 for the fiscal year 2012. Prior to that, funding was managed internally by the IUSA treasurer.

Her involvement, she said, adds another step in the long process of moving funds from the account. Fund requests from IUSA Treasurer Casey Baker must be approved by Student Life and Learning and Assistant Dean of Students Steve Veldkamp before Ritter transfers the money.

Baker attributed the disconnect between IUSA and the University regarding the fund to the gap between CFR sessions.

“Since this process occurs every two years where a group of 12 students makes decisions regarding student fee amounts and allocation, there is nothing that can be done with the money, surplus or not, this year,” she said in an email. “In the meantime, all that can be done is the collection of data to inform future financial decisions and current allocation decisions.”

Baker said the $30,000 surplus was created in fiscal year 2011, and $400 was used from the reserves to cover program fees in 2012. Baker did not specify in the email what the $400 covered. A new IUSA administration will be in place by the next CFR session.

“Our administration will be briefing the next administration during the transition period since the new administration will be making the presentation,” she said.

Vice President of Administration Chris Kauffman said IUSA did not seek distribution numbers until earlier in the semester when they were asked for the information and could not provide it.

“From what I’m understanding, we’ve never actually requested data on a daily level,” he said. “In the past, we have never demanded those numbers.”

He said to his knowledge, no IUSA administration has requested this information since the program began running in 2005.

Kauffman attributed this to the fact that IUSA, though its name is on the program, does not oversee the program and there is no specific person within the IUSA administration that oversees the program.

“Really, on a day-to-day basis, there isn’t one person who sits in charge of the operations,” he said.

* * *

Once IUSA executives received numbers on the program, Kauffman said the results were surprising.

Based on the first round of data provided to IUSA by the New York Times, residence halls saw the lowest pick-up rates for the week ending Oct. 18. Read and Eigenmann residence halls saw the highest number of returns, or unused papers returned to the distributor. At Eigenmann, 54 percent of papers distributed were returned that week.

Kauffman said IUSA’s next step is to aggregate and analyze weekly data for trends so they can relocate the papers to a spot on campus where demand for the newspapers is higher.

Mitjavila expressed discontent with the current situation and said he hopes the administration can increase its input and control of the program.

“There’s not a lot of oversight from IUSA,” Mitjavila said. “What we’d like to do, is to start doing that again.”

Although the fund is separate, McCord said that does not mean IUSA should not have oversight of the program.

“How in the world would they make a good decision about how the money should be redirected if they don’t even know how much money is there?” McCord asked.