Correction appended.

Last Thursday, the Student Assembly rejected Cornell Cinema’s appeal of a 22-percent cut in their byline funding over the next two academic years. This decision, which will seriously compromise one of our University’s most important cultural institutions, was a triumph of bureaucratic ineptitude and willful narrow-mindedness.

Like a number of other groups that provide entertainment for the student population — such as the Slope Day Programming Board and the Cornell Concert Commission — Cornell Cinema receives a portion of the undergraduate Student Activity Fee to fund its events. For the past four years, this allocation has stood at $11 per student. This year, the theatre requested an increase of $0.75 to counteract the loss of some $15,000 in outside funding due to the recession. Instead, the S.A. has lowered the Cinema’s share to $8.60.

Unlike other groups, the Cornell Cinema provides daily programming, much of which is unavailable anywhere else in the world. Moreover, it attracts scholars and artists to our campus and provides an invaluable resource for the student body. But the S.A. seems to be largely ignorant of the cultural significance of Cornell Cinema — one of the premier college theatres in the country, and a beacon for independent, foreign and archival film screenings — and would seek to turn it into a campus-based AMC.

Not one of the assembly members’ arguments stands up to reasoned analysis. Indeed, the S.A. has demonstrated a clear lack of understanding with regard to the economics of the Cinema, and misrepresented or ignored evidence that contradicts their assertions. For example, assembly members alleged that byline funding was being used to pay staff and administrator salaries. This charge is inaccurate. And while the Assembly insisted that attendance has been unacceptably low, the reality is that the Cinema sold 30,000 tickets last year — 20,000 of them to undergraduates — and boasts average per-film attendance of 110.

Even still, most members seemed to suggest that the theatre’s operations were too ambitious. In particular, Vice President for Finance Chris Basil ’10 argued that the Cinema should eliminate screenings on certain days of the week (e.g. Sunday through Tuesday) as a cost-saving measure. Had he done his due diligence, he would have realized that the opportunity costs associated with scaling back operations far exceed any potential savings.

As Mary Fessenden, director of Cornell Cinema, explained, revenue from the Cinema’s Sunday to Tuesday shows exceeds labor and rental costs. Operating seven nights a week is not, as the S.A. would suggest, an extravagant expenditure for the sake of a few film buffs — it’s a fiscally responsible business decision.

Assembly members also repeatedly expressed concern that students were not sufficiently involved in the administration of the theatre to merit byline funding. S.A. President Rammy Salem ’10, in particular, argued, via e-mail, that the Cinema should be “a student-run theater” with a minimal number of paid staffers relegated to an advisory role, in much the same manner as SDPB and CCC. While this rationale is attractive in principle, it reflects a flawed understanding of the Cinema’s unique situation.

The Cinema’s managing director, Christopher Riley, explained in an e-mail that the job of running a cinema requires an intimate knowledge of international tax treaties, contacts with various film archivists and distributors and experience running an independent theatre — all of this to bring in over 300 films a year.

The scale, reputation and, particularly, the professional status of the Cinema allow it to obtain extremely rare films and higher-quality prints, while also empowering it to negotiate lower film rental rates. By making the Cinema a student-run operation, all these arrangements are thrown into question. The Assembly is clearly blind to — or uninterested in — the subtleties of the Cinema’s situation.

This is not to say that the way the Cinema operates now — as an organization in limbo between direct University oversight and student supervision — is ideal. Should the administrative end of the Cinema be relocated within the hierarchy of the University, such that it would fall less within the purview of the Assembly? Perhaps. Should students have a more active role assisting in the administration of the organization? Maybe they should. But there is no excuse for using a substantial budget cut — which will increase ticket prices and decrease the selection of films and special events available to students — to achieve those aims.

Despite this, Salem asserted in an e-mail, “I’m no economist, but showing popular films on the most popular days of the week would maximize your profits.”

“I know that solely catering to the mainstream crowd is definitely not the focus of Cornell Cinema,” he wrote. “But I would like those movies that are not mainstream and used for more educational purposes to be paid for by the institutions devoted to this very educational mission.”

If the S.A. is suggesting that the Student Activity Fee should only be used for “mainstream” endeavors, what exactly does it mean by “mainstream”? The distinction is impossibly arbitrary. In reality, the Cinema’s screenings cannot neatly be divided between “entertainment” and “education,” as Salem seems to suggest.

Other organizations are not held to such nebulous standards. For example, the Assembly did not vote to reduce funding for the Cornell University Programming Board, even after it suffered a financially disastrous fall semester last year.

By contrast, the Cinema responded to the Assembly’s requests over the past two years by reducing the number of films shown by 15 percent; removing poorly-attended screening dates from their calendar and cutting labor costs. As a result, they were able to streamline operations and achieve a budget surplus, which was only depleted by the economic downturn.

And yet, even after complying with the Assembly’s requests, the Cinema was issued a harsh and unexpected rebuke. Instead of helping the Cinema with its deficit — assistance approved to be granted to the Slope Day Programming Board in the form of a $35,000 payday last February — the S.A. doled out half-baked proclamations about fiscal responsibility.

It’s clear that our Cinema has been hamstrung by a handful of overly zealous budget hawks. We hope that the student body, aware of the Cinema’s central role in our campus culture and its incomparable artistic value, will protest this disastrous and wrong-headed decision.

Howard A. Rodman ’71

John Schroeder ’74

Matthew Laflin ’00

Farhad Manjoo ’00

Jason Weinstein ’01

Logan Bromer ’06

Carlos Maycotte ’07

Jonathan Lieberman ’08

Rebecca Weiss ’09

Julie Block ’10

Peter Finocchiaro ’10

Ted Hamilton ’10

Ann Lui ’10

Sammy Perlmutter ’10

The signatories of this column are current and former  Sun Arts & Entertainment Editors, Sun Associate Arts & Entertainment Editors, former Sun Editors in Chief and other editors who contributed to the Arts section. The authors may be reached through Sammy Perlmutter, Sun Associate Editor and former Sun Arts & Entertainment Editor, at sperlmutter@cornellsun.com. Guest Room appears periodically.

The original column incorrectly stated that the Student Assembly provided the Slope Day Programming Board a “$35,000 payday last February.” In fact, last february the S.A. passed Resolution 22, which granted the S.A. the option of diverting funds meant to go into an investment fund to the SDPB.