News > October 23, 2003

By Alex Reyes

Old Gold and Black Reporter

An internal auditing process of the Howler is being conducted to examine the yearbook’s expenditures exceeding its budget last year, according to Ken Zick, vice president for stu-dent life and instructional resources.

The current editor in chief of the Howler, senior Jennifer George, said she learned of the discrep-ancy when the staff received the invoice from Taylor Publishing Company, the yearbook’s publisher, earlier this fall.

The Howler notified the Division of Student Life of the excess spending, which made the deci-sion to conduct an internal auditing process.

Senior Meara Ranadive, business manager of the Howler, said an audit would be the best way to determine how the budget and “documenta-tion irregularities” occurred.

Zick said an internal audit does not automati-cally mean that there has been any wrongdo-ing.

“It is routinely a method in which the university can discern how management processes can be improved and corrective action taken when there is an over expenditure in the budget,” he said.

Neither Zick nor the Howler staff commented on how much expenditures surpassed the organization’s budget.

The contract between the university and the publishing company established a cost of $77,000 to print the Howler. The yearbook was allotted $97,097 in 2001 from the Student Budget Advisory Committee for the publication of the 2002-03 Howler.

Zick said the audit will be internal and confi-dential and that the university routinely conducts audits, either randomly or at the request of an administrator.

“We don’t know too much at this point, we simply want to determine how it occurred, know what can be improved and take correc-tive action,” Zick said.

Several corrective measures have already been taken. The Howler staff met with the publishing com-pany to discuss how to reduce some of the expenditures authorized last year.

“Our publishing company has been really helpful in dealing with this matter,” George said.

“They knocked down some things off the price, and have compromised some of the costs with us because they realize that some of the proper procedures on our end were not necessarily followed, like get-ting things properly approved and going to the publisher with signatures,” she said.

George refused to comment further on alle-gations concerning the use of unauthorized signatures.

Last year’s editor in chief, Alan English, ’03, was unavailable for comment.

Harold Holmes, associate vice president and dean of student services, is the temporary faculty advisor for the Howler this year.

George said his role will help outline the appropriate procedures to be followed in coming years and give a better understanding of the finances and details of the yearbook’s account.

“I definitely think that there will be some procedures put into place to clearly outline the role of the advisor in approving certain addendums that will cost us more money,” George said.

“This will be a good way to show we can stay in our budget but still have a quality book. This has nothing to do with the staff this year, and this is all stuff we didn’t really know about,” George said.

Ranadive said this will be yet another learning experience for the Howler staff. “I don’t see our audit as a bad thing or any form of punishment