Before Interterm, Collective Copies reported unpaid bills for publication of The Hamster amounting to $5,510, according to the Association of Amherst Students (AAS) Budgetary Committee (BC) Chair Livia Angiolillo '04. As of last week, Collective Copies reported that it still had not been paid. Monday morning, Collective Copies called Angiolillo to tell her that the bill had been paid. "I don't have clue where the bill went. There's no record of it at Collective Copies. Now it just looks like the bill never existed," said Angiolillo.
Angiolillo asserts that The Hamster merely assumed it would receive all 100 percent of its funding requests and that, because they failed to submit the appropriate forms, they were never allerted of the actual amount.
Angiolillo wrote an email on Dec. 11, 2002 to Hamster advisor Professor of English Barry O'Connell, Ansell and Assistant Dean of Students Sam Haynes. "The Budgetary Committee allocated (specifically for three issues) $3,100 for the entire semester to The Amherst Hamster.," she wrote in the email. "Today, however, I was contacted by Collective Copies in order to reconcile the bill ... and apparently, nearly $3,000 additional dollars were spent without the approval of the Budgetary Committee/AAS ... The bill was 'inappropriately' passed off as an AAS bill and not one of The Amherst Hamster's own."
"Assuming that the AAS fully funds our request from the Nov. 17 request, The Amherst Hamster's production costs for the fall of 2002 exceed our allocated budget by less than $100 ... The final discretionary funding would put the Hamster's total fall budget at $4,920, and total expenses at roughly $5,010 (give or take $5)," Ansell wrote to O'Connell and Haynes on Dec. 11.
Angiolillo pointed out that The Hamster could not have rationally believed that its request would be fully funded, due to the AAS policy of granting only 60 percent of requested funding to publications.
The staff of The Hamster claims that the publication did not spend more than it had been allotted by the BC and that Angiolillo used the line-item nature of budgetary requests to take away funding. "Money was granted to The Hamster ... And one hour after the issue comes out, we have this email from [Angiolillo] ... Basically what she did was go back and try to find a way to use how the AAS funding was broken up to take away funding from us," said Jonah Ansell '03, Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Hamster.
The staff of The Hamster believes that it was more than coincidence that the issue of the magazine that coincided with the flurry of emails commented satirically on both Angiolillo and senator Ben Baum '03. Page six of the September issue had a picture of the "The Wizard of Oz'" Wicked Witch of the West with a caption that said, "Avenging House-Related Death of Sister, AAS Budgetary Committee Leader Denies Funding to All Student Groups for Spring of 2003."
Angiolillo did see the picture, but denied any influence on her decisions as BC chairperson. "Although the timetable suggests coincidence, I did not even put two and two together," she said. "The photo of me as the Wicked Witch of the West was amusing."
Ansell and other Hamster staff thought that hurt feelings may have contributed to the monetary difficulties of last semester, and the dissent in the senate regarding appropriations for The Hamster for this semester.
"We're humorous, but at the same time we're offensive. We know that's our role," said Ansell. "And that's the problem with a satire magazine, we will bite the hand that feeds us if it needs to be bitten."
Senators discussed the controversy surrounding The Hamster at this week's AAS meeting.
"We gave [the managers of The Hamster] money and they decided they could spend whatever they want and rack up a bill in town. ... I don't really think people who do things like this should be funded," said Mike Flood '03.
In part, Ansell blamed the problem on inefficient communication between the BC and club leaders. He expressed this to former AAS President David Bugge '04E, Vice President Bob Razavi '03, and Angiolillo in an email on Dec. 10, 2002. "I understand that various clubs work with someone individually on the budgetary committee to prepare for their budget requests. I did not have this over the course of the semester, even after getting recognized, and would very much benefit from this next semester. Various times, funding would be granted or denied-and I would have no idea until days or weeks later how much we'd been granted," he wrote.
Angiolillo gave a possible explanations for The Hamster's problems. "[It] was not finally and officially recognized until mid-November. In addition, all emails sent to club heads regarding BC announcements are included in full in the weekly AAS announcements," she said.
According to Ansell, he also tried to contact Angiolillo via email early in January, asking if there were any unresolved issues, but never received a response.
Another cause for misunderstanding was a discretionary allotment the BC made to The Hamster for a flyer. "Part of the disputed money is over a request that was made, in October, because money was given for the production of our second issue and a flyer that we planned to do. Liv said that because we never printed that flyer, we don't get that money towards the second issue ... At no point did she say, X amount needs to be used for the flyer and Y to be used for the issue," said Ansell.
Angiolillo disagreed. "The funds that are allocated are specific to the immediate line item in the request. Normal budgets may be altered through the process of reallocation forms and policies, but special funding requests such as programming and discretionary, which The Hamster's funding was, cannot apply for reallocation," she said.
The Hamster recently switched publishing companies. "The reason why we're at Turley Publications right now is because they're the biggest publisher in New England ... When you're working on a small scale, Collective Copies makes sense," said Ansell.