The struggle for editorial control of the Red Cedar Log continued as four new bills concerning the issue were introduced during the ASMSU Student Assembly’s meeting Thursday.
But because the measures are proposed changes to the ASMSU Code of Operations, they must gain policy committee approval before they are voted on by the assembly.
Melanie Olmsted, Women’s Council representative for the assembly, presented two bills with Black Student Alliance Representative Chrystal Price; Mike Ehlers, the assembly’s college of Social Science representative; and Shane Waller.
“I felt the bill I wrote was a compromise, but I felt the one thing that I didn’t want to compromise was editorial control,” said Waller, the assembly’s vice chairperson for external affairs.
Waller’s proposal is similar to a bill introduced by Bryan Newland, Native American Indian Student Organization representative for the Student Assembly, which failed at a policy committee meeting Tuesday. Waller’s proposal would give complete editorial control to the Student Assembly.
In response to the proposals, debate arose between ASMSU representatives and yearbook employees. Yearbook employees spoke against previous accusations that the publication was not promoting the diversity of the university’s campus.
“The yearbook is doing as much as they can possibly do to make the yearbook more diverse,” said Rianne Jones, Red Cedar Log editor-in-chief.
Final approval of the Red Cedar Log is held only by Jones. The publication also has an advisory committee composed of five student government members and two Red Cedar Log representatives. The committee can only make recommendations that the yearbook is not obliged to follow.
Jones, along with other members of the yearbook, said they had the forms required to request a spot among the 60 reserved pages for registered student organizations hand-delivered to every minority organization on campus at least twice.
“The opportunity (to be in the yearbook) was offered to every minority group on campus and the response was apathetic,” said Pia Love, ASMSU director of minority and progressive student affairs who assisted the yearbook in distributing the forms to the groups.
One of Newland’s main complaints when he first proposed editorial control by the assembly on Dec. 6 was that minority groups did not have adequate representation in the Red Cedar Log.
However, ASMSU officials are unaware of the fact that attempted editorial control over the yearbook is against the law, despite the fact student government funds support the publication.
“If any of those bills passed, (MSU) would be the only school in the country that would allow this,” said Mike Hiestand, a staff attorney at Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va.
Supporters of the bill also believe ASMSU deserves a say in the publication because the undergraduate student government supplies a majority of the Red Cedar Log’s funding.
ASMSU provides the salaries for paid staff members of the yearbook and in 1999 added $3 to the existing $10 ASMSU tax specifically for the Red Cedar Log’s budget.
Hiestand referred to a recent lawsuit in which a panel of federal appellate judges ruled in favor of Kansas State University’s yearbook, which the school attempted to confiscate because of content.
“It is not rare that student government or school officials are not always happy with the press they get,” Hiestand said. “It is rare that the student government would be so bold in directly saying they want editorial control.”
Steve Bossi can be reached at bossifre@msu.edu
