Media fee to be added to the bill by Sarah Murphy News Editor

Alternative methods of funding must be found to resuscitate CIMN.

Since UPEI Student Union Council’s decision to cut all funding allotted to CIMN, efforts have been made to find alternative ways of providing for the station’s financial needs.

After researching and inquiring to other universities, executive members of Council suggested collecting a media fee. The money gathered would provide for the cost of operation of CIMN, along with some of the costs of publishing the Cadre.

“The idea behind the media fee, since we are no longer funding CIMN, is to provide them with some funding for themselves so they can carry on their operations.” says Stephen Lewis, Student Union Vice President Finance.

UPEI students are unlikely to want to foot the bill without being asked. ©

“It has to go through referendum,” says Lewis, who adds that the union has yet to decide with the outcome of the vote whether or not this fee will be mandatory for all students or if students could opt out.

The media fee would not be exorbitant, but Lewis and CIMN are conscious that even the smallest amount of money is sometimes too much for students whose tuition and student fees are rising endlessly.

“We haven’t really set a price on it, but we are looking at two dollars a student.”says Lewis. “We will see after the referendum, what the general consensus is. A two dollar fee really doesn’t seem like a lot, but then again, we are talking about university students, and fifty cents some days may seem like a fortune.”

Rob Maclssac, CIMN Station Manager agrees.

“T think two dollars is not a lot of money, but if students feel like it is being forced upon them they will definitely react.”

CIMN is bracing themselves for this student reaction and insist that they want their proposal to be as clear as possible as to inform the students of the situation, without forcing them into something they do not want.

“We want to give students a choice, we don’t want this to be ambiguous. We want this to be a straightforward, and completely understandable process,” adds Maclsaac.“We are not looking for a mandatory donation. It would be great if somehow we just got a whole bunch of money but it doesn’t work like that, so we’re looking for students to say ‘yes, we support this.’”

James Panton, CIMN Music Director thinks the media fee is a good idea, but could have been initiated earlier, avoiding CIMN’s present financial fiasco.

“T don’t know why they didn’t do this a long time ago, because none of this would ever have come to pass. I don’t know why anybody ever even-thought of it. Most major universities have a media fee for

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