University of Toronto’s University College Literary and Athletics Society (UC Lit) recently rejected the proposed budget of the Gargoyle, the University of Toronto’s campus rag. UC Lit expressed its concern that too much money delegated to the paper was being spent on alcohol, food and parties. The Gargoyle’s funding will be withheld from them until their budget is approved.
The Gargoyle does not publish news. The by-weekly rag includes topics such as opinions, politics, science, arts and culture, and features original short stories, poetry, comics and art. Publishing is done by hand by staff gluing the articles and pictures together. The staff members are not paid for their work.
Daniel Tsekhman, president of UC Lit, said the council does not have the powers to revoke money already delegated for the current school year.
“Their funding is still waiting for them to be used for the newspaper, pending the approval of a revised budget,” Tsekhman said.
The Gargoyle’s proposed budget includes allocations for food, alcohol and parties. The UC Lit said it was concerned alcohol was to be consumed on university property without the knowledge of the administration and in violation of university policies.
Tsekhman said this was especially a concern because the money the Gargoyle receives is from student levies.
“I thought that most students probably wouldn’t want such a large portion of their money spent on food, alcohol and parties that only 15 – 25 people take part in,” he said.
“Pizza and beer are provided as dinner for contributors at production nights,” said Rosy Rong, content editor-in-chief at the Gargoyle. “If you want people to stay for 10 hours to work on a paper, you have to feed them, and give them something to keep them going. . . . We publish 13 times a year, and this means that each production night, we will spend $70 on pizza and $70 on beer.”
Rong said the paper also has two end-of-term parties which come to around $215.
She said part of the spending problem comes from the nature of the spending.
“The current policy is that if we do not spend 100 per cent of each year’s levy, we lose that money,” Rong said. “If we have a surplus in our bank account, this is deducted from our next year’s levy money. You can imagine how this policy means that there is no way to save for the future, and it encourages short term spending.”
Rong said changes at the Gargoyle have already been made.
“We have had to amend our budget to include the use of honoraria in order for the UC Lit to pass the budget in time,” Rong said. “We aren’t really keen on this idea, as it changes everything at the Gargoyle. The Gargoyle has always been a voluntary thing and the food and beer has always been a nice bonus as a result of the contributors’ hard work, and it’s a nice way for contributors to talk and interact with each other at production night.”
“Offering honoraria changes the incentive structure at the Gargoyle, and in future years, this can be a serious issue. We do not want it to become a thing that people do for money. Although this is certainly not an ideal solution, it was more important to us to receive the levy money in order to keep publishing. In the mean time, we are pondering solutions to change this for next year,” Rong said.
There will be an opportunity for the UC Lit to review a revised budget Nov. 22.
“We don’t want to stop the paper; we just want student funds spent with student interests taken into consideration,” Tsekhman said. “We try and support the Gargoyle, we just didn’t support the way they wanted to spend their money.”