Targum secures presence at Rutgers for next 3 years

After months of reaching out to the Rutgers community, I am happy to announce that The Daily Targum will continue to publish University news for the next three years. The Targum’s Referendum, which allows our newspaper to remain financially independent from the University, passed in the School of Arts and Sciences, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, School of Engineering and Mason Gross School of the Arts.

First and foremost, thank you to all of the students in all seven schools who supported us by voting “yes.” To those of you who voted “no” — I thank you as well for fulfilling your civic duty, voicing your opinion and reminding us that there’s always room for improvement.

Thank you to every student and organization who supported the Targum by helping us publicize the Referendum and encouraging your peers to vote. All efforts that were made to promote the Referendum — through social media, word of mouth and more — helped us communicate our message to parts of Rutgers that we would not have reached by ourselves.

The Referendum failed to pass the Rutgers Business School, Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy and Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, but we were extremely close. In total, we needed less than 65 "yes" votes across these schools to have passed the entire Referendum. We’ll have to make some tough decisions, but we’re still alive — though if you already heard The Tab Rutgers’ erroneous Friday morning report, you would’ve thought we were dead and gone.

While The Tab’s report that we lost three schools wound up being correct, it was merely speculative at the time. I want to make clear that the Referendum Oversight Committee had not released its results at the time of that report, and The Tab never contacted us to ask about the results or what they would mean for the Targum. We will also continue to cover the three schools we lost, despite reports from The Tab. The report stated Targum “had been funded by all students since 1980.” This is simply not the case. We have failed to pass schools in the past, and while the revenue loss will create a financial burden and force us to make some difficult decisions, we will continue to serve the Rutgers community.

I want to make this very clear: The Targum and The Tab Rutgers aren’t competitors. We both call ourselves news outlets, but the only real commonality is our duty to train student journalists for the professional world. We’re disappointed that The Tab Rutgers, which like Targum aims to educate our peers, ran a report without attributing information and without first contacting us. A place of learning should be more responsible. I applaud Muckgers for taking a stance against their behavior. News stories don’t matter if they aren’t truthful during the time of publication.

Moving forward, a very big thank you to our referendum coordinator, Marnie Newman, and to her assistant, Kashif Khan, for their tireless leadership and organization to make sure the Referendum ran as smoothly as possible. Thank you student team leaders and poll workers for sacrificing two weeks of your time to encourage students to vote. Thank you Murtuza Hussain and Referendum Oversight Committee, for ensuring that the polling ran according to guidelines. Thank you Melaina Fraboni, Kerri Willson, Lori Smith, Jackie Moran, Felicia McGinty and the Office of Student Affairs for your assistance with the Referendum’s introduction to electronic voting, and for allowing us to conduct the Referendum in the first place. Thank you, Vice Chancellor’s Student Advisory Council, for supporting the Targum and urging your colleagues to vote "yes." Thank you Jeremy Berkowitz, for taking the time to meet the editors and publicize the Referendum on your Humans of Rutgers University Facebook page. Thank you Targum alumni, for writing commentaries highlighting the value of Targum — especially Melissa Hayes, for rallying the troops during our time of need. And thank you to The Daily Targum’s entire staff. The appreciation and love that I have for you and your unwavering cooperation, support and dedication to the Referendum and your work cannot be overstated.

The Referendum not only granted us the financial stability to continue publishing after summer break, it also confirmed that the second-oldest college newspaper in the United States will reach a historic 150 years of publication.

But more importantly, the Targum will continue to report on Rutgers news and offer University students a place to make lasting friendships and start careers — just as we have since 1869.

Dan Corey is the editor-in-chief of The Daily Targum. He is a Rutgers Business School sophomore majoring in marketing and journalism and media studies.

Editor's Note: Two sentences from this column have been removed in order to reflect changes made to the April 25, 2016, print edition of The Daily Targum.

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