The Voice was established in the 1940s to not only give Eastern Oregon University students an opportunity to gain experience in journalism but to also give a voice to the whole student body.
Now, the students who are using The Voice for its original purposes are asking, “How much are our voices worth?”
The EOU Student Fee Committee voted in March to cut all funding for The Voice.
At the appeal meeting on March 3, four employees of The Voice met with the SFC to plead for the funds necessary to keep our newspaper running.
The committee had no questions for the Voice employees who attended the meeting.
On April 13, they made their final decision to defund The Voice for the 2023-2024 school year.
This is not the first time the EOU student-run newspaper has had its voice muffled.
In the 2014-2015 school year, The Voice had an annual budget of $27,000. The budget decreased to $18,563 in the following year.
In 2016, The Voice was moved out of the College of Arts and Humanities and it was converted into a club. It was combined with KEOL, EOU’s student-run radio station, forming the EOU Media Group.
The EOU Media Group lasted through the 2019-2020 school year. It had a combined annual budget ranging from $65,000-$75,670 during the four years it ran.
The Student Fee Committee defunded KEOU in 2021, after nearly 50 years of student-run radio.
Previously a print publication, The Voice had to go online only in the 2021-2022 school year after funding was cut to $4,000.
If The Voice does not secure funding from an outside source, it will have to permanently shut down after 80 years of bringing a voice to EOU students.
