This past week a senator approached The Student Life, concerned that Senate, led by ASPC President Brian Andrews ’01, had been breaking its own constitution by conducting business during private meetings. While Andrews disputes whether or not either of these gatherings constituted a private meeting in violation of Senate bylaws, it is clear that both did. The first, in the fall, had a quorum of Senate members and was labeled by Andrews an "emergency meeting." The second was the Senate retreat in San Diego. Prior to the retreat, TSL had been slated to present its Constitution to Senate for approval. At the retreat, the TSL Constitution was reviewed line by line without the public present (as is required by Senate bylaws), and it was determined that the Constitution would not be presented the following Tuesday. In conversations with Communications Commissioner Harry Ou ‘01 at that meeting, it became clear that the Constitution would not be presented until TSL had changed it. That is tantamount to Senate voting on and rejecting the Constitution behind closed doors, and therefore constitutes a direct violation of their bylaws.

In an interview with Editor-in-Chief Nora Lawrence ’01, Andrews questioned whether or not TSL could report on the covert meetings which Andrews had held, because TSL was the subject of those meetings. This question was followed by a thinly veiled threat from Andrews that suggested printing information about the covert meetings would lead to an unelaborated "war."

TSL would be derelict in its journalistic obligations if it did not report questionably unconstitutional ASPC activity to the student body. To say that TSL remains precluded from reporting on the alleged misdeeds of Senate in this case is to say that Senate has the power to break its own rules with respect to TSL with impunity. Unfortunately, TSL thus finds itself in a no win situation: in order to report relevant facts to the Pomona College community, TSL must report on itself.

We have made the decision to report on ourselves only after concluding that it is the best option in an imperfect situation. In this column we call attention to the fact that we are reporting on ourselves in the spirit of full disclosure. We invite our readers to be especially vigilant of the objectivity of the facts that we report, and to form their own conclusions about those facts.

Outside of this college, newspapers report on themselves when necessary. One cannot report the news without making news. Additionally, The Asterisk has regrettably folded because ‘it was more trouble than it was worth,’ and as a result, no one but TSL is left to report on the paper or the student government. And bigger issues are at stake here.

Andrews’ real message was clear: don’t run an article about Senate’s misdoings, or TSL will face retribution. Simply put, TSL’s funding is at stake. Last spring, Senate cut TSL’s funding by $4,000 at the same time that it allocated $4,000 to The Asterisk. Prior to last year, Senate had been generous in providing additional funds for new equipment purchases; it was that generosity that disappeared.

Implicit in Andrews’ responses was the idea that such a cut would be possible again, and perhaps even more likely in a semester where senators have suggested that TSL be made independent. In fact, it is unclear what else he could have meant. Realistically, TSL cannot survive in a recognizable fashion without a significant amount of funding from ASPC. As such, the threat of a budget cut is a threat to censor and shut down the paper. If Andrews attempts to shut down the paper for which he once worked for exposing his alleged abuses, we could do little to stop him.

But we can point out that the current controversy does not involve a controversial joke issue that some students find inappropriate or offensive. Rather this controversy surrounds our ability to report on a news story, our ability to tell the truth about Senate itself. This is, in essence, why we have a student newspaper.

As this week’s Senate Briefs detail, TSL was denied the opportunity it had been promised to present its Constitution, which had been approved both by TSL itself and by the Print Media Committee, chaired by Communications Commissioner Harry Ou ’01. Ours is the only Constitution in recent memory to be micromanaged in this manner. This would have been regrettable but understandable a year ago, amidst significant public anger, but now it is completely unacceptable. There were no complaints against last semester’s joke issue. The only complaints we’ve received about our articles have been from people who feel things they wrote were over-edited.

We ask that Andrews and the Senate treat us as it treats every other organization on campus by understanding that there ought to be significant if not complete discretion over our Constitution, and a more lax hand with respect to our budget; I think we would all like to believe that our president is above silencing us for telling the truth.