All McMaster residence students receive a residence yearbook made by the Inter-Residence Council (IRC). This is funded by a component of the IRC Fee called the IRC Yearbook Fee. This fee was initiated by a referendum in 2006 so that yearbooks would be available for all students and so the price per yearbook could be kept at a minimum.

Next year, the two components of the fee are projected to be:

IRC General Fee: $30.31
IRC Yearbook Fee: $16.28

The money raised through the yearbook component of the fee can ONLY be spent on expenses related to the yearbook (printing, software, cameras, yearbook editor salary, etc.). However, for next year, the IRC has switched yearbook printing companies, and this could result in savings of over $28 000 on yearbook productions.

The IRC wants to know what YOU think should be done with these savings.

If the two components of the IRC fee were to be combined, the IRC would be allowed to spend these savings on other initiatives, like events, conferences, awards, etc. and/or decrease the IRC Fee in the future. If the fees aren't combined, the IRC will only be able to spend that money on expenses related to the yearbook.

What the IRC is asking is if you are in favour of combining the IRC Fee and IRC Yearbook Fee.

Voting will occur between Wednesday, March 28th at midnight and Wednesday, April 4th at 11:59pm. Check your Mac email for your voting information!

For more information, talk to your IRC Reps, post a question here, attend one of the IRC information sessions (Thursday, March 29th, at 5:30pm or 6:30pm), or email us at [email protected].

i paid my all my fees by sept 1st. 1 week later i was forced to pay 50 bucks for this damn irc fee which they added after the payment deadline... i dont even want a yearbook.

we're combining fees so that we can save a lot more money that way in terms of yearbook production and put it into programs we plan for students.

Admittedly, charging you guys the fee late was the fault of the university, (Student Accounts and Cashiers ([email protected]) to be precise). They collect the IRC Fee for us and then transfer it to us (at a slight charge). This year they somehow forgot to initially. Trust me when I say we were annoyed to - we're residence students too and also had to scramble to get in that extra $44.09 to the university for them to then take a dollar and give it back to us...


With the IRC's new yearbook printing company for next year, we could be spending considerably less money on yearbooks next year. Combining the fees would let us spend some of what is currently yearbook only money on other things, whereas if we don't combine the fees, it'll continue to be yearbook only money (so invested in maybe making the book bigger, getting more cameras, new software, etc). Either way the ideal is that a couple years down the line, assuming everything works out with the new printer, the IRC fee could decrease. This could occur whether we combine the fees or not.

You want to pass a referendum so you have access to money to spend it on other junk not related to the yearbook? Isn't that like saying you want to combine the dental and health plan fees into one because people hardly ever claim health services and you want to let students get bi-annual teeth whitening?
(couldn't find a better analogy, lol)

Why can't you just keep these savings in case of emergency... you know, running a surplus instead of trying to keep a balance of 0...
(or am I not interpreting this correctly?)

Whoever did the awesome job at getting these savings is rewarded with having their money given to the general IRC?

Originally Posted by Silver

i paid my all my fees by sept 1st. 1 week later i was forced to pay 50 bucks for this damn irc fee which they added after the payment deadline... i dont even want a yearbook.

i didnt realize we all paid for it since i never wanted one either. i dont even think my roomate kept his and out of the while thing there was like 3 pictures of people i knew

u should add an option of the yearbook. i clearly didnt even know we had one tillt he day it was handed. definetly didnt want

Originally Posted by RyanC

You want to pass a referendum so you have access to money to spend it on other junk not related to the yearbook? Isn't that like saying you want to combine the dental and health plan fees into one because people hardly ever claim health services and you want to let students get bi-annual teeth whitening?
(couldn't find a better analogy, lol)

Why can't you just keep these savings in case of emergency... you know, running a surplus instead of trying to keep a balance of 0...
(or am I not interpreting this correctly?)

Whoever did the awesome job at getting these savings is rewarded with having their money given to the general IRC?

I'll take the compliment on finding the way better deal. =P The rest of the credit can go to Underground.

The thing is, as it stands, we can't keep it as a rainy day fund for general purposes, it could only be kept as one for yearbook purposes. So it would be $28 000 that we would have in surplus but would be obligated to reserve only for yearbook. And there are considerably less yearbook related emergencies than other things.

And I guess the analogy kind of holds true... But it's less a case of decreased use, since that kind of implies decreased product. So more like if providing you with healthcare became 50% cheaper, saying we'll now cover other stuff (dental, medication) but charge the same in taxes? If that makes sense.

We generally don't run a balance of 0. The previous year the IRC ran a deficit which ate up most of the emergency funds though. So yeah, some of this could go to helping restore some of this. We generally try to make sure the funds are mostly getting used, since we aren't looking to make a profit, and students should be getting to benefit off money from student fees, but will sometimes end up turning a profit on some events despite aiming to run at cost (like by selling way more tickets to things than expected) which contributes to us finishing with a surplus.

Why not lower the yearbook fee?

most people in my res dont even want a yearbook >_>. its pretty much the irc group in my res that wants it and that is like 5 people.

Originally Posted by Tailsnake

Why not lower the yearbook fee?

This would actually be a big part of the endgame plan. But the thing is this is our first year trying printing through Underground. So we're not entirely sure how the process will go, what additional expenses there will be, etc, so we can't really drop it for next year as we'd then be in a place of not having sufficient funds to continue to provide the yearbook at all. But no matter which way the referendum goes, dropping the fee in the future, assuming all goes well, is definitely an option!

It would have been great to have more info about this
ex. in the email sent out