There is a reason newspapers aren’t funded by the government. It is called freedom of the press or, rather, separation of press and state.

Government financing of the press implicates government ownership of the press. The government has the potential to use its financial backing as a bargaining chip in decisions as to what will and will not be reported. It has the potential to withdraw that financial backing if what is reported is not reported “correctly.”

In the ideal business setting, the Iowa State Daily, The Drummer and ethos Magazine would be required to rely upon their respective business talents to fund their publications through advertising and subscriptions.

Iowa State University, however, is not an ideal business setting. It is an educational setting.

The Daily, The Drummer and ethos represent three effective learning centers for journalism, public relations, advertising and graphic design students. They provide practical experience and faculty oversight. They also happen to provide a service to the university.

Last week, the budgets for these publications were cut. Given the limited amount of funds available to student organizations in any given year, a decrease in funding for these groups would not be unusual or unfair.

What is unfair, though, is a GSB that targets three of the most influential publications on campus for cuts that appear to overshadow funding cuts given to other organizations, for reasons that are less than palatable.

I direct you to Off-Campus Sen. Mark Nimmer, who was reported as saying that he didn’t read ethos and would have preferred to zero-funded the organization.

First, ethos is targeted at a specific group of students and faculty — those belonging to the LAS college. Therefore, not everyone will read it. Second, I would challenge Sen. Nimmer to stop thinking about himself and start thinking about the student body. As I recall, we elected representatives, not kings. Then again, I don’t recall voting for Sen. Nimmer.

The issue of duplication of services also arose during the funding debate. Its application to the three organizations, however, is questionable. Magazines are substantially different from newspapers in both style and material. Contrary to the views of some, the Daily is not the same as The Drummer in content. The three publications cater to different audiences with differing interests.

Unfortunately, when senators look for duplication of services, they look more at form than substance. In essence, the argument is “these are all publications, therefore they are all the same.” Such statements make for efficient debate, but not enlightened decisions.

To make the issue easier to understand, I would like to make a proposal: Disband the GSB because it is a duplication of services with the Graduate Student Senate. While the GSS and GSB are dramatically different in some respects (representation and student organization financing), GSS is still a governmental body that represents students on student issues.

I would like to make another proposal: I recommend anyone taking Empirical Political Research next semester consider studying the correlation between negative Daily and Drummer coverage of GSB senators and their votes to fund, or not to fund, these publications.

The hypothesis: Senators who are getting bad press from these publications are more likely to vote to decrease or zero-fund the publications.

Truly, though, I don’t understand why GSB senators would go after these publications in order to bolster their public images. All they need to do is hire the Veishea publicity committee. After all, no publicity is … well … no publicity.

Finally, I would like to make one last proposal: In order to restore the funding for the three publications, we should follow the example set by a local radio personality when he locked himself in the Campanile until he raised enough funds for its restoration.

I recommend we lock our GSB officials in the Daily office and threaten that, unless we raise the $21,100 needed for the publications, we will not let them back out.

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Theresa Wilson is a graduate student in political science at ISU from Dubuque. She is a second-year law student at Drake University.