Editorial: Building the paper Concordia deserves

Your independent student newspaper needs your help.
The Concordian was established 25 years ago as an alternative to a student media that senior editors felt had strayed too far from the interests of the student body. Since its founding, The Concordian has worked against long odds to provide students with a dedicated forum for their ideas and debates, and has sought to engage directly with their initiatives.
Now, a quarter-century after its creation, The Concordian is looking ahead to its future. As a paper striving to be a true community advocate, this paper is set to become a more active and engaged voice at Concordia.
But fact remains, this newspaper can’t grow to better serve you, the student, without the needed resources. Over the last 21 years, we have struggled to keep up with mounting printing costs and the need to repair ageing equipment in the face of fixed revenues and rising inflation.
Over that same period, this paper has received exactly $0.03 in fee increases, to a total levy of $0.10 per credit. Ten cents bought significantly more a quarter century ago than it buys today.
And the fact remains that Concordia’s other weekly newspaper, The Link, receives nearly twice this paper’s fees – $0.19 – to produce the same amount of content each week.
The Concordian’s editorial board is all in favour of competition. Competition will not only increase the quality of both newspapers, but it will oblige both to better represent the interests of all students. But competition, real competition, begins with a level playing field.
Concordia students deserve a newspaper that reports on their activities, promotes strong initiatives and strikes a chord with the interests of real, everyday, class-going students.
We are the paper for those students, and a voice for you, the often-silent majority:
You are a marketing student who can never find a word printed about the many events your association puts together;
You are a political science student that isn’t satisfied with the daily Montreal news feed but wants to read about the latest events in Pakistan or Darfur;
You are a physically handicapped student who would like other students at Concordia to know what it’s like to spend a day trying to negotiate Concordia’s halls;
You are an Engineering student, an English major, a member of CISA, a maths-lover, a film buff, a weekend museum-goer, a regular, five-classes-a-week student who wants to know more about what constitutes your world.
This newspaper is your forum. What interests you, interests us.
The Concordian does not push a single ideology because the voices of the students are more important than the personal politics of our staff.
That’s why editors from every discipline are attracted to The Concordian. We draw staff from psychology, political science, history, fine arts and sociology – students who bring with them a breadth of experience – and why we have more contributors than any other student print publication.
We believe that we have built a paper of quality and integrity. We have the passion, the dedication, the talent and the will to go even further.
On Nov. 27, 28 and 29, your vote in favour of The Concordian’s fee levy of $0.09 per credit will allow us to grow into the newspaper that students deserve.
You can provide the means.