Between the protesters’ waving signs, the additional media coverage, the unusually vocal audience and the array of students with camcorders, yesterday’s Student Assembly meeting looked more like a political rally or professional sporting event than an Appropriations Committee by-line funding appeal. The entire meeting focused on hearing Cornell Cinema’s appeal to overturn the Appropriations Committee’s recent decision, which not only denied the organization’s request for a $0.75 increase, but also imposed a $2.40 decrease from $11.00 to $8.60 for the next two-year byline funding cycle.

Fuming over film: Students, holding up signs in support of the Cornell Cinema, protest during the Student Assembly meeting yesterday.At least 40 students attended yesterday’s meeting.

After a 90-minute long discussion, the S.A. voted to uphold the appropriations committee’s decision. The vote to overturn the decision split at 10-10-1, but a two-thirds majority is necessary to overturn the decision.

Cornell Cinema director Mary Fessenden and managing director Christopher Riley presented the the cinema’s case for appeal.

“We’re not coming to the S.A. to solve all our problems, we’re just asking for the bare minimum. We’re just asking for 75 cents more per student,” Fessenden said.

She added: “I think that to pull the rug out from under us by cutting our funding by 22 percent ... you put us in a very difficult position.”

The S.A.’s chair of the appropriations committee and vice president of finance Chris Basil ’10 explained the committee’s rationale: “We’re concerned about attendance [and] urge Cornell Cinema to reduce the number of days they program [films] to Wednesday through Saturday because these are more crowded days.”

“Additionally we’re concerned by the fact that Cornell Cinema is currently holding about $80,000 in cash reserves and some [appropriations committee members] felt this was excessive. We were also concerned about the ... percentage of the overall budget that goes to staff salaries and also [about] the fact that $36,000 goes to student salaries,” Basil said.

Basil also noted that the S.A.’s own clerk is the only Cornell student whose salary is paid using byline funding.

“The appropriations committee felt it was improper to take the Student Activity Fee and use it to pay other student salaries,” Basil said.

Finally, Basil observed that any funding increase would allow for new expenditures and “these high expenditures wouldn’t be sustainable in the future.”

Before responding to the specific concerns that Basil noted, Fessenden told S.A. members: “After we originally presented to the S.A., we realized that our budget was in an overly complex format and S.A. members may have drawn some incorrect conclusions.”

She added: “Some of the erroneous decisions made by the committee before [may have been] because of our overly complex budget.”

Fessenden then addressed the S.A.’s concerns, beginning with attendance rates.

“There seems to be a perception among S.A. members that there is poor attendance at our shows,” she noted. “30,000 [people] attended Cornell Cinema screenings last year and 20,000 of them were undergraduate, which is a testament to the [quality programming at] Cornell Cinema [considering] this is a time when so manymedia outlets offer competition. Screening films seven nights a week is one of the special things about Cornell Cinema and it has been a tradition for over 40 years.” Fessenden added.

Fessenden explained that 75 percent of the director’s salary is covered by the University, though this distinction was not made explicit in the budget as initially submitted with the funding request.

Fessenden also stressed that it is necessary to pay student workers salaries.

“Changing to a volunteer-only staffing arrangement is not realistic [because] projectionists must spend 10-15 hours training to use expensive equipment [and the] films range in replacement value from $5,000 to $25,000.”

Fessenden also told the S.A.: “We don’t have to use the [student] activities fee to pay students; if that’s a problem we can pay students out of other funds.”

S.A. members, however, are not convinced.

“All funding goes into a pool,” Basil said. “It’s all used together and you can’t really say that you’re not using it in student salaries.”

The assembly’s vice president Ola Williams concurred: “We’d like to have students have a bigger say in the programming and also I would say that you should go to the University and ask them for money for students’ salaries because that’s not something that the student activity fee should be used for.”

In the end, the vote ended 10-10-1 and thus, without the necessary two-thirds majority needed to overturn, the appropriations committee’s decision was upheld. When the result was announced, one student booed, while others appeared calm but frustrated.

“They don’t have anything like that at Harvard, Yale or Princeton, so please when you’re thinking about this decision, don’t dumb it down,” said audience member Prof. Mary Wood, architecture. “Moreover, Cornell Cinema is a forum for students who are film-makers because Cornell Cinema screens their films and [students] have the opportunity to screen their films and hear back comments.”