Unite Party members uploaded a video to YouTube on Tuesday afternoon of Student Body presidential candidate Tj Villamil speaking about The Independent Florida Alligator.
The video, posted by "UnitePartyUF" at about 1 p.m., had about 850 views as of Tuesday evening and was also posted on the Unite Party's Facebook page.
In the video, Villamil said he asked the "Florida Alligator" to cut its expenses in 2011 in order to increase the funds available for student organizations by 5 percent.
Villamil could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening.
Christina Bonnarigo, Unite Party spokeswoman, said she could not clarify or elaborate on Villamil's statements.
Janine Sikes, UF spokeswoman, said the Alligator is financially independent from the university.
"The University of Florida often purchases space for advertising or campus news bulletins but provides no subsidy or other financial support to the newspaper," she wrote in an email Tuesday.
Jeanna Mastrodicasa, assistant vice president of student affairs, said the newspaper's budget has no effect on the budgets of student organizations.
"[The two] are financially and editorially totally separate," she said.
Jean Chance, chairwoman of the Alligator's board of directors, said the Alligator became independent of the university in 1973 after the editor, Ron Sachs, approved an insert to run with the paper listing the addresses of abortion clinics. Abortion was illegal in Florida at the time, as was printing information about abortion or abortion clinics.
Prior to this, she said, the Florida Alligator, as it was then called, had an office in the Reitz Union, was funded by the Students Activities Fee and had a board that was appointed by the UF president. After the insert ran, Sachs was arrested, Chance said. The court ruled in his favor, declaring the state law unconstitutional and a breach of free speech. However, Florida Attorney General Robert Shevin ruled that the Alligator and UF should split.
Following this decision, she said, the paper moved off campus and added "independent" to its name.
This independence refers not only to the paper's relationship with UF, but also to the relationship between the newsroom and the business side, said Patricia Carey, general manager of the Alligator.
The newsroom is entirely student-run, with 52 paid employees. The other departments — advertising, business, production and promotions — have 22 paid employees and 10 unpaid interns. These people are a mixture of both students and career staff members, Carey said, but the two parts of the Alligator never influence each other's content.
"There is a strict hands-off policy when it comes to the editorial department," she said. "And it works both ways. Editorial can't come into advertising and tell us what to run, and we would never come to editorial and say, ‘Write this story about an advertiser.'"
Carey oversees the Alligator's total operating expenses and said the newspaper's budget has been steadily decreasing since 2009.
As a result of the shrinking budget, staff has also decreased.
Alligator staff writers Joey Flechas, Emily Morrow and Meredith Rutland contributed to this report.
Tj Villamil, presidential candidate for the Unite Party, speaks in a YouTube video posted Tuesday afternoon.
