The Leveller, an independent left-wing campus publication, is poised to receive funding from Carleton graduate students.

The question will be put to grad students as a referendum in the Graduate Students' Association (GSA) election March 24-25, after the GSA council approved the referendum question.
Since its founding in February 2009, the paper has been run by volunteers, mostly graduate and undergraduate students at Carleton, according to David Tough, the founding publisher and editor-in-chief of the first issue.

"We've been operating as a renagade operation," Tough said. "It's operated on the basis of goodwill and camraderie for a couple years."

If graduate students approve the referendum question, The Leveller will receive an annual levy of $1.50 per student, which the editors estimated will bring in about $13,500 annually. They said the money will go to production costs, hiring a business manager and paying an honorarium to the editor, associate editor and production manager.

Tough described the levy effort as the "beginning of institutionalizing The Leveller as a part of Carleton's landscape."

"The Leveller contributes to a richer and more forceful political culture at Carleton," Tough said.

Three councillors voted against the motion.

"You're going to have graduate students from all over the political spectrum, and they'll see that the GSA supports, or has a levy for, an extreme right or left group," said business councillor Andrea Chuey.

"I think it would be great if a right-wing group . . . actually came out against The Leveller, and we actually got a dialogue going along those sort of lines," said history councillor Brian Foster. "But in the meantime, all we have is The Leveller."

While The Leveller isn't exclusively a graduate paper it publishes "stories about things that have a direct effect on graduate students," Tough said.

"Grad students already are funding the Charlatan, and I think a lot of grad students have felt there isn't a lot of reporting that's really relevant to grad students in there," said Liz Martin, GSA vice-president (operations). "It's getting us thinking about issues that are directly affecting us."

Tough acknowledged the money would come with a responsibility to students.

"Not having a levy meant we could do whatever we wanted to do," Tough said. "The levy does tie us down to certain levels of responsibility. We have to institutionalize ourselves. We have to answer to the fact we're getting money from Carleton students."