Every Wednesday, the College wakes up to freshly printed (and, of course, highly anticipated) issues of The Student. We feel that The Student is an integral part of the Amherst community, and that as such, it is necessary to maintain transparency with our readers. To outsiders, The Student magically appears at Val to accompany your lonesome Wednesday morning breakfast. In fact, that light, 12-16 page newspaper is the culmination of a lot of grunt work and late nights in the newspaper office meeting the weekly deadline. While we take pride in and enjoy the work it takes to produce The Student each week, this work contributes nothing to the community if the newspaper fails to be distributed to the College community. This distribution is now threatened as The Student, after years of struggling, is now no longer self-sustaining.

The newspaper is an expensive production, with issues ranging roughly from $650 to $850 for a regular issue, and special issues like Homecoming and Commencement costing more. As an independent non-profit organization, we pay for our issues through advertisements and subscriptions and have not traditionally received funding from the Student Activities fee that is distributed by the AAS Senate. The Student is the only campus publication that is independent, which means that there is no oversight of the newspaper by the Senate or by the school, and it allows full editorial control on the part of the Executive Board. But unfortunately, due to rising printing costs and declining advertisement revenue, the newspaper has of late been unable to meet its financial needs and has accrued debt due to printing and production costs.

While the decrease in revenue from advertisements began a few years ago, The Student was able to cover the costs of producing a weekly paper with the savings of years past. However, we have now depleted these savings, and as a result were forced to request funds from the Senate in order to continue printing. The cost will be as much as $4,000, the amount that was allocated this past Monday by the Senate, for the rest of the semester. However, we think we will be able to cut cost to as little as $3,275. With the Senate’s support, we will be able to use the incoming capital to pay down the debts the newspaper has incurred. As the Executive Board of The Student, we believe our use of Senate funds is temporary. In order to be financially solvent in the future we are taking several important steps.

Because our current revenue does not cover the cost of publication, we are looking to increase our current income and open new avenues of revenue. However, in the past, the newspaper was completely funded through these two sources. The publishing staff is now taking an active role in selling advertisements rather than simply sending out rate cards every semester. The Career Center has also agreed to provide our advertisement rates to the programs, companies and schools that recruit at the College. Through the active sale of our ad space, we hope to significantly increase advertisement revenue. Additionally, another wave of subscription letters is being sent out to parents and alumni with the hope that it will attract more subscribers.

We also hope that we will be allowed to accept donations from alumni, and are currently talking with the Alumni House about this issue. It is still unclear whether or not The Student will be allowed to solicit gifts, but we hope that we will be able to work things out with the Alumni House and that a letter writing campaign will add another source of revenue on which the newspaper can depend.

With these plans in place, we hope to be financially solvent in the near future. We are open to further suggestions for increasing our revenue and thank you for your continued support and readership.