The undergraduate Student Assembly (SA) voted at its Oct. 29 meeting to uphold its Appropriations Committee's decision to decrease Cornell Cinema's funding from the Student Activity Fee. The current allocation of $11 per student would drop to $8.60 per student, a 22 percent cut.

The cinema program had requested a 75-cent increase to cover a projected shortfall from other funding sources including the New York State Council on the Arts. Cornell Cinema receives a substantial portion of its operating budget from the activity fee; organization and program budgets funded by the fee are reviewed every two years.

The Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GPSA) had previously recommended Cornell Cinema receive an increase in support from the graduate student activity fee, from $11 to $11.30.

Cinema Director Mary Fessenden said she is unsure how programming and operations will be affected if their funding is cut.

"There's still a slim chance of appeal," she said. "The overall fee won't be set until the end of the semester."

The SA raised issues including staff and student salaries and poorly attended programs and suggested a four-day schedule, eliminating Sunday-through-Tuesday programming.

Fessenden presented the appeal with cinema managing director Christopher Riley and provided breakdowns of Cornell Cinema's budget and attendance figures. Fessenden said that 30,000 people attended programs last year, 20,000 of them undergraduates.

"Some of the lesser-attended programs were responses to student organization requests and co-sponsorships (with academic units)," she said. "Less programming could lead to further cuts in funding for specialty programming, and we may have to reassess the ticket pricing structure," for undergraduate and graduate students and commercial films versus specialty programming.

Fessenden pointed out that several budget-cutting measures have already been taken, and that staff and student salaries are paid from non-activity fee funding, given that the current fee allocation only covers 30 percent of the organization's total operating budget.

Faculty members Mary Woods, architecture, and Dominick LaCapra, history, also spoke against the budget cut, and more than 40 students attended the meeting to show support.

A 22 percent cut in student funding "would be devastating for Cornell Cinema, which is one of the outstanding university film organizations in the country and offers Cornell students an immense range of films," Romance Studies chair Jonathan Culler wrote in an Oct. 28 letter to the Appropriations Committee. "In the Department of Romance Studies, we are especially concerned with the effects this major budget cut will have on the opportunities for students to watch foreign films, which provide an important vehicle for language learning."

Cornell Cinema is encouraging undergraduates to contact their SA representatives to express their support for the program; a petition against the SA decision is online at http://ipetitions.com/petition/cornellcinemasaf.