I attended exactly three films put on by Cornell Cinema last year. In descending order of theater packedness: The Dark Knight; Waltz With Bashir; L’Enfant Sauvage. The first of these films was, well, awesome — as in the biblical sense of the word (not the contemporary, frater-natural lexicon). Waltz With Bashir was gripping — as in this graphic-novel looking thing gripped my throat and coerced me into caring about a massacre I had never heard of. L’Enfant Sauvage was boring — as in I was bored. The 18th Century frog doctor and his feral friend left me squirming in my seat before the Twizzlers and popcorn were all eaten.

In light of these three memorable trips to Cornell Cinema, the organization’s current fiscal problems are of great concern. Good film is needed. The form, at its best, is emotive — alive with feeling and nuance. It is humanizing. These emotions and affections lend sympathy to the cause of our Cinema Crusaders, who now fight a precipitous drop in byline funding where they expected an increase. Their cause seems just, because it is for the sake of feeling and emotion and nostalgia, for the rarified “film,” as opposed to mere “movies.” You might think, as the sign-wavers at last Thursday’s Student Assembly meeting did, “how can we let something so vulgar as a budget stand in the way of art’s intangibles? What of beauty, awareness and perspective? Slap a price tag on that. I Dare you! It will surely be worth more than a hazy recollection of the Pussy Cat Dolls on Slope Day!!”

Well, here goes. If every undergraduate were to go to the Cinema as much as I did last year (and that ain’t a lot), it would have sold almost 50,000 tickets in total. This figure is considerably higher than last year’s actual total of 30,000. The extra earnings would represent a windfall of roughly $80,000. Such a diffuse increase in attendance could easily be absorbed in the sea of empty seats (the median attendance for a single screening last year was in the mid-30s) with little or no added cost. To put the dollar figure of this windfall in perspective, $80,000 represents the cost of one full-time staff position to facilitate the program. More to the point, it is twice the difference between what Cornell Cinema asked of the S.A. and what it got.

Alas, 50,000 people don’t attend on-campus screenings every year; 30,000 do. And the S.A. must always assume an awkward, intrusive role in governance. On top of this, due to dried up or drying out alternative sources of funding for many by-line funded groups, the S.A. faces new budgetary constraints to fulfill the needs of all its constituents. The decreased funding from other sources implies that the Cinema must change the way it funds student groups, and as a result will need to make organizational, perhaps programmatic, changes in order to stay alive. What does this mean? Well, it appears that an outside, non-expert panel of undergraduates with deep pockets will heavily influence the body of art and recreation Cornellians have come to expect and Cinema leaders have long controlled. There is some indignity in this (damn it!), especially from the perspective of those immediately involved.

But let us put this clash into context. This is the nature of the recession era budget battle. Each group in need of money is vital. Each is willing to see why other groups should do a little more with a little less, except for them. And Cornell Cinema cannot even plead its case convincingly by appealing to other groups’ increased or stable funding. No, the Cinema has been effectively and now publicly targeted for what the Student Assembly Appropriations Committee considers glaring inefficiencies and peculiarities in its business operations that other groups do not share.

Contrary to what some of the melodramatists among us have suggested, the new budget does not spell the end of Cornell Cinema as we know it. The organization will, however, change because it is compelled to do so. It may dim the projector from Sunday to Tuesday. It may do better at reaching would-be patrons to fill seats from Wednesday to Saturday, making those nights more profitable. It may show a half dozen fewer obscure French films, with those who know enough to be disappointed finding other ways to see them. But whatever approach the Cinema takes, the show will go on while the real power — the real fight to be taken up here — lies within the student body manipulating, not fighting, the free market light we live in.

What do I mean by this? Well, our new Community Clause may not provide for students to vote on budgetary measures (and so has been labeled impotent), but we can still vote with our feet and with our wallets. You really want the full range of movies every night of the week? Grab 10 friends and go to the Straight. Organize a North Campus night at the movies. What about a fraternity, a sorority, an urban dance, an academic probation or a West Campus housing night at the movies? I know that such a road to rescuing Cornell Cinema would be rough, and certainly longer than waving a sign or giving an impassioned two-minute speech at an S.A. meeting. But remember, the fix here is simple (and fun): Go to the movies, bring friends, sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

Andrew Daines is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He may be reached at adaines@cornellsun.com. The Right Stuff appears alternate Wednesdays this semester.