By Patrick Cowles
Daily Titan Asst. News Editor
Eric Broude contributed to this article.

The Los Angeles City College student newspaper, the Collegian, lost 15 percent of its printing budget this year due to cuts, its 80th year in continuous production.

However, Rhonda Guess, assistant professor of journalism and faculty adviser to the Collegian, said her department chair, Daniel Marlos, initially said the cut would be 40 percent of their budget, despite an agreed 15 percent cut with Shared Governance.

That supposed 40 percent cut came from President Jamillah Moore's office.

"It just didn't make sense," Guess said.

Guess stated she found out about the 40 percent cut last Wednesday, Sept. 23, while walking past her chair's office going to lecture her Journalism 101 class in the morning.

"He called me over and handed me a budget," Guess said. "He said, ‘Your budget has been cut.’"

The Collegian's $25,000 printing budget had been cut to $15,000, a 40 percent decrease.

Marlos told Guess the $10,000 cut was counter to what was agreed to by Shared Governance. Marlos, along with Dean of Academic Affairs Allison Jones and Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs Kimberly Perry, agreed to a 15 percent cut, not 40 percent.

"We were all, many departments, to give back 15 percent, but the Collegian will be giving back 40 percent of its printing budget," said Guess.

The 40 percent printing budget cut came from a Contract Request Form with a period of services from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2014, with News-Type Services, Inc., LACCs long time printing vendor, stated Marlos.

The contract was prepared and signed by Marlos on Sept. 8, with a budget of $25,000. However, the president's signature is dated on Sept. 22, with a pen mark through the $25,000 figure and $15,000 handwritten above.

Perry stated this contract was a mistake and another has been prepared. She did not know why $10,000 had been reduced from the budget.

However, Marlos said he submitted two duplicate contracts, the second with an understanding that the vice president needed to reduce the budget by 15 or 16 percent. Marlos submitted the first on Sept. 8, and the second week one later after no response came from the president's office. Marlos went to the dean and the vice president, both did not know where the contract went.

"Time was running out, and we needed the contract done so we could come out on schedule," Marlos said. The Collegian could not be allowed to print without a renewed contract because printing funds are encumbered in advanced each year, added Marlos.

With a printing contract that had expired June 30, Marlos needed the contract renewal finalized so the Collegian could continue printing.

When Marlos finally received the contract from Administrative Services, he noticed that resubmission was not written across the top, which meant that the original contract had been signed, not the duplicate.

That contract had a note attached which stated, "For your files, please note the total amount was reduced to $15,000 per Dr. Moore."

"So the president took the $25,000 request and lined through it and did not consult me, did not consult the dean, did not consult the vice president … the 40 percent came from me doing the math, nobody ever said 40 percent to me,” Marlos said. "And to the best of my knowledge, this was a unilateral decision."

"Now the story we're getting is this was a miscommunication," Marlos said. The president was apparently not aware of the other contract, added Marlos.

"But there is no explanation why this time-sensitive contract sat around for two weeks without getting a signature," Marlos said. "There was no indication on why this amount was selected, and there was no input on behalf of any interested parties."

For a biweekly newspaper, that miscommunication could have forced the paper to run weekly, cut circulation drastically, or constrict the amount of pages the students could publish, said Guess.

Based upon the service dates of the contract, the fallout would last five academic years.

"I was absolutely frantic," Guess said. “The last person it goes through is the president. What kind of mistake is that?”

So frantic, Guess drove to Los Angeles Mission College, approximately 22 miles away, to address the cut (which she believed to be a retaliation against incidents between Collegian staff and President Moore from last year) at the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees Meeting. At that meeting the Board listened to Guess, but said that this was something that the board was unable to take up.

Mars Melnicoff, a broadcast journalism student with the Collegian, also spoke at the Board meeting, describing an incident at a Town Hall Meeting she covered on campus.

During that meeting, which she recorded with her iPhone, Moore singled out and embarrassed Melnicoff publicly simply for recording a public meeting on public property which is protected under law.

“People have a right to know if they are being recorded if they want that information released,” said Moore during the meeting.

However, administrators of a public college are “state figures” while on campus, and their personal rights to privacy are transparent regarding administrative matters, said Guess.

Even though the Collegian will print off $21,250 per year given 15 percent, Guess projected the paper, which students have filled anywhere from eight to 14 pages, will adhere strictly to eight pages. She also mentioned the circulation may have to drop from 5,000 copies per issue to 4,000.

The Board also addressed a proposal by the Shared Government Council to shift the Collegian from academic affairs to student affairs, making the paper a co-curricular activity.

That proposal came from Tammy Robinson, chair of the English and ESL Department and member of the Budget Task Force within Shared Governance, during an LACC administrative meeting Thursday, Sept. 24, attended by Marlos and Guess.

But for a college on accreditation probation trying to regain its accredited status, faculty have been perplexed as to why the administration would attempt such a drastic reorganization of the Collegian when the student journalists have continued to win awards for their work.

Under student affairs, the college administration would be responsible for the student media. Academic discipline would no longer apply to the Collegian staff.

Also, the Media Arts Department may not be able to offer courses numbers 217, 218 and 219: publication laboratory, practical editing, and techniques for staff editors respectively, said Marlos.

“We would not have those classes if we did not have a newspaper,” said Marlos. “We would be basically cutting an academic program.”

Essentially, the Collegian would be in the same realm on campus as the math team and debate team, and therefore, susceptible to nonequivalent budget cuts.

However, a college newspaper is not a club, said Jean Stapleton, Journalism District Discipline chair and chair of the Journalism Department for East Los Angeles College.

"The paper is part of a degree granting department," added Stapleton, "and the students get college credit for it, so it has no business being outside of the academic departments."

During the meeting last Thursday, Guess was told by Earic Peters, Dean of Student Life, she was responsible for students in the classroom and that given the paper is a "co-curricular" activity, student journalists out on campus are the responsibility of the student services, not the academic faculty.

Yet Perry said the Shared Government Council for LACC proposed the shift to save the budget by consolidating certain programs into different spheres of revenue, those programs are the math team and debate team, not for the purpose of shifting a "co-curricular" activity out of academic affairs.

Under academic affairs, the paper brings revenue to the college as a Full Time Equivalent Student program, the paper would lose that revenue for the college under student affairs, said Marlos. Although there would be more fund potential under student affairs for the paper, none have been proposed since the administration has only been discussing budget cuts, added Marlos.

“I think our budget is safer under academic affairs where it is than going into student services,” added Marlos.

For the oldest community college publication in LA, the advent of campus life under student affairs,"will be the death knell of the paper," said Guess.