What can you buy for $4 nowadays? Not much, with capitalism being so late and all. Maybe a coffee if you’re lucky. I’ll tell you what some MUN students think is worth only $4, though: Memorial’s independent student media organizations. I think this is terribly sad.
As outlined in Section 13, Part D of MUNSU’s official constitution, The Muse’s current media levy fee of $2.00 per student per semester (a portion of the semesterly $4.00 student media levy, the other $2.00 of which is allocated to CHMR-FM) has not been increased since October 2001. The media levy referendum proposes a $1.49 increase, to be split between The Muse and CHMR-FM, and subsequently tied to the Consumer Price Index.
As an alumnus of Memorial and The Muse, as well as the former Eastern Representative for Canadian University Press (CUP), and former President of the Communications and Media Studies society, I feel uniquely positioned to discuss this media levy issue and hopefully convince you, Memorial’s student body, to vote in favour of raising the media levy.
A national perspective
To put things into perspective for those unfamiliar with the national student journalism landscape, through my work with CUP, I discovered that The Muse is the lowest funded student newspaper in the entire country.
As a frame of reference, Trent University’s Peterborough Campus is a similar size to Memorial’s St. John’s Campus, with approximately 10,000 enrolled undergraduate students. Trent’s long-running student publication, Arthur Newspaper, receives a non-refundable media levy of $7.48 per student for the Fall term, and $7.47 per student for the Winter term, totalling $14.95 yearly. This allows Arthur to produce a monthly print edition and pay their staff a living wage.
Similarly, the University of New Brunswick has approximately 13,000 undergraduate students across two campuses, and collects a media levy fee of $2.50 per course per semester (ranging from a total of $15.00-$20.00 incurred by each student on a semesterly basis) to fund their two student publications, The Brunswickan and The Baron.
Considering The Muse’s continuous positive contributions to both Memorial and St. John’s, the exceedingly past-due rectification of The Muse’s media levy, and the levy fees received by student publications at similar-sized post-secondary institutions, I believe this proposed raise to be an entirely reasonable ask and imperative to The Muse’s continued success.
How The Muse works
The Muse has more than proven its worth to both Memorial students and the greater St. John’s community over the past few years. Immense work has gone into reviving the paper post-COVID, and since then, its dedicated masthead has helped The Muse amass the largest social media following for a student publication in the country by more than double. Muse staff have also worked tirelessly to put the publication back into print after a decade of web-only coverage, the funding for which was entirely outsourced thanks to the generosity extended by advertisers.
While incredibly rewarding that The Muse has been able to achieve these things despite the outdated media levy fee, much of the labour required for these achievements to come to fruition has gone uncompensated.
Currently, The Muse has approximately eight paid staff members, including MUCEPs, and over a dozen volunteers who contribute to the paper regularly. This greatly contrasts with past years, when The Muse had over 16 paid positions.
An adjusted media levy fee would allow The Muse to pay more of its incredibly hardworking staff and volunteers for their labour and contributions to the publication, an especially significant issue as the cost of living crisis continues to disproportionately impact post-secondary students — if this is what they’ve been able to accomplish with $2.00 per student per semester, imagine what they could accomplish with an appropriately adjusted media levy. It’s frankly a little shocking to me that some students are advocating against fellow students being compensated for their labour.
Who gets funding and why? Clubs/societies versus student newspapers
Since the media levy referendum has gone live, I’ve seen some vitriol directed towards The Muse, including some folks saying that it’s unfair for The Muse to sustain funding via the media levy included in students’ tuition, when clubs and societies do not get such funding (though ratified clubs and societies get around $120 from MUNSU on a semesterly basis).
I can only speak to my own experience, but during my time as President of the Communications and Media Studies society, we barely spent a cent and were still able to pull off various well-loved and well-attended events such as mixers, workshops (including a student-led workshop series), craft nights, film screenings, and even a formal reception event following the program’s annual conference. Running a society is only as expensive and as involved as you make it, and for me, required marginally less labour than churning out coverage some folks say is on par with local news outlets.
I am by no means advocating against clubs and societies and their right to flourish. Clubs and societies are an important part of university life, I would know. I believe this issue comes down to a question of whose university life they are particularly important to and why.
A given program’s society is only going to benefit those in the specific program (most of the time), whereas news coverage of university goings-on is going to benefit the student body at large, and even the broader St. John’s area in some cases.
At the risk of sounding harsh, it makes sense that a student publication is funded by a levy fee because it provides an essential service to hundreds, if not thousands, of students, rather than just a few b’ys who want to do a bus crawl and get a little crazy on a Friday night.
Attacks on student media and the value of The Muse
Student newspapers are historically a key site for activism, change, and coverage of important issues that go underreported or unreported by mainstream media conglomerates.
The Muse regularly covers important student issues such as LGBTQ+ issues and issues facing international students, including Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, especially when members of our own community boarded a Freedom Flotilla to aid relief efforts.
They cover accessibility issues, students’ cost of living crises, homelessness, the housing crisis, and local arts and culture.
They cover provincial and municipal politics; for example, The Muse did comprehensive profiles on each candidate during the most recent municipal election, and many St. John’s residents approached staff to express their appreciation for this coverage, saying that our reporting made their decision-making process far less arduous, as information about candidates’ policies and promises was not widely available.
The Muse also covers the array of MUN Sea-Hawks sports teams, student groups and clubs, MUNSU and GSU affairs, including elections, insurance, policy changes, and by-elections, and the university as a whole.
The paper provides MUN students with tangible work experience in the media industry. In addition to this, any student can submit an article, and most of the time, it’ll get published, giving that student a platform to discuss an issue that’s important to them.
And every single article, video, comic, or magazine by The Muse is authored by a real person and is not inaccurate, biased AI slop with poor form.
If you ask me, this list alone should be reason enough to vote yes.
Universities whose student publications have been forced to cease operations only have more opportunities to screw students over without facing any accountability. Opposing student media is endorsing censorship.
For example, Fanshawe College’s paper, The Interrobang, was forced to cease operations in 2025, and FSU executives suggested that, instead of their usual hard-hitting and community-focused coverage, the masthead should instead become a mouthpiece for the student union and create social media posts for them. That’s pretty much every student journalist’s worst nightmare.
As administrators and student union executives continue to slash student services while retaining their own ridiculously superfluous perks of the job, a student newspaper is a tangible, essential service that both directly gives back to the student body and holds folks in power accountable for their actions.
I understand that times are tough, and that proposing a media levy referendum during a tuition freeze might strike some students as odd, but an extra $1.49 is a small price to pay to be able to do one of the most powerful things you can do as a young person: stay informed.
Vote yes to the media levy referendum here.