Students hoping to catch that new indie movie or the latest popular flick may soon find the on-campus movie theater in Willard Straight Hall offering fewer screenings and less selection.

The Student Assembly Finance Commitee’s proposed funding cuts for Cornell Cinema would drastically impact the cinema’s operations, according to its director, Mary Fessenden.

The Student Assembly is set to vote on whether to decrease Cornell Cinema’s budget by $2.40 per student. Currently, Cornell Cinema receives $11 per student, so a decrease of $2.40, means they would receive $8.60 per student. Initially, Cornell Cinema had asked for $0.75 increase per student in their budget for next year.... And cut: Moviegoers wait for a film to begin at the Cornell Cinema in March. A proposed decrease in funding could reduce the number of movies screened.

The decrease was recommended by the Appropriations Committee of the S.A., citing concerns over low attendance at Cornell Cinema events. If the cuts are enacted, the Cinema will most likely have to limit some of its special events and reduce the number of screenings per week, among other measures, Fessenden explained.

“The Appropriations Committee of the S.A. is asking us to reduce the number of nights we show movies. However, we need those seven days of slots to bring in a diversity of movies,” she said.

Fessenden also said that with so many activities competing for students’ attention nowadays, that they try to show everything at least twice.

Cornell Cinema has suffered numerous -ous financial setbacks this year. Because of the recession, many of the cinema’s external donors have significantly trimmed their grants to the program. Outside sources of revenue support about 60 percent of Cornell Cinema’s budget, while it receives 30 percent of its revenue from the undergraduate student activity fee and 10 percent from the graduate student activity fee.

With this declining revenue and the S.A.’s proposed cuts, Fessenden explained that the cinema is expected to experience a budget shortfall of $45,000 next year.

The Appropriations Committee recommended the reduction saying that the student activity fee should not be subsidizing salaries for both students and the four full-time employees who work at the cinema.

This is a significant point of contention between the S.A. and Cornell Cinema. Fessenden said that her salary is not funded by the student activity fee but is included in the budget because of the structure of the cinema when it was first formed in the 1970s. The cinema has always included administrators’ salaries in the budget they present to the SA. Fessenden said that when S.A. members review cinema’s budget, they may perceive cinema’s budget for the upcoming year to be higher than it actually is because salaries are subsidized by sources other than the S.A.

Fessenden said her salary is funded by the College of Arts and Sciences. Chris Basil ‘10, S.A. vice president of finance, said that only roughly 75 percent of Fessenden’s salary was covered by the College.

By contrast, the Cornell Concert Commission advisor is paid by the Dean of Students. Fessenden said that generally the CCC does not include administrative costs like salaries in its budgets proposals. Therefore, when the budgets of Cornell Cinema and CCC come up for review by the S.A., the cinema’s budget looks comparatively large.

“They’re basically fighting over decreases in their salary,” S.A. President Rammy Salem ‘10 said. “The administration should be picking up those costs. Even the students themselves are basically paying part of their own salary. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be paying students, but that shouldn’t be falling on the SA’s head.”

Salem mentioned that there was even some talk of reducing the budget to $3.80 per student, so as to cut administrative expenses entirely out of the budget.

By eliminating the salaries of the 35 students who work at Cornell Cinema, the cinema would save approximately $35,000.

According to Fessenden and several student cinema workers, it would be impossible to fill these positions without compensating them. Currently, students at Cornell Cinema can work as house managers, projectionists and box officers in the evening for several hours at a time, when most students are doing homework.

Ian Crovisier ‘10, a house manager at the cinema said, “The cinema might be able to scramble something together, but working here is a lot of responsibility and it is hard to commit people on such a regular basis as opposed to volunteering for a concert once a month.”

Fessenden added, “You can’t run a theater on volunteers. What happens if no one shows up? Who is going to run the projectors?”

Caitlin Cowie ‘11, a projectionist at Cornell Cinema, partially based her decision to come to Cornell based upon the number and quality of films that the cinema screens.

“The mission statement of Cornell Cinema is to educate. The budget cuts not only degrade the quality of Cinema, but also go against Cornell’s mission statement [of ‘any person … any study’],” she said.

Avid movie-watcher Fuat Yurekli ‘10 said, “I go see a movie there every week. They show a lot of classic movies they don’t play in theaters anymore. They show a wide array of different movies that you can’t get from other theaters in Ithaca including Cinemopolis.”

Elaina Mule ‘10, who works in the Latin American Studies Program where she shows foreign films, offered some constructive advise for the cinema.

“Cornell Cinema pays to screen Foreign Films and documentaries that have some really great content, but often don’t have more than 10 students in attendance,” she said. “If the budget cuts are necessary,Cornell Cinema might want to consider showing fewer films but more effectively advertising the films that are shown.”

The S.A. will be considering Cornell Cinema’s appeal of the funding cuts today at its weekly meeting in the Willard Straight Hall memorial room at 4:30 p.m.