It comes out to 93 cents an hour. Thats how much our photo editor Matthew Normand has been paid so far this semester. Hes worked 300 hours total, or roughly 12 hours per issue taking photos, developing film and designing graphics. But yet hes only received two pay checks so far this semester totaling $280. Do the math.The story is the same all over the newsroom. Advertising representatives, reporters and editors, no one saw a pay check as promised Wednesday and weve been told no one will until Dec. 1. Matthew Normand is owed $595 by the university and most everyone else is owed hundreds of dollars as well. By Dec. 1 that total will be over $700, but he and everyone else might be lucky to see a third of what we are owed before Christmas. This current foul-up by the university is only the most recent in a long line of problems in paying student workers at the Houstonian. In the spring semester staffers had to wait nearly six weeks to get their first pay check. The same held true this fall. Despite working since mid-August putting out papers twice a week, no one on staff saw a dime until Oct. 1. New staffers didnt see a cent until Oct. 15. They worked for two months putting out this paper on the universitys word that they would get paid, and the university has failed to keep its word. Paperwork problems we were told was the source mix-up. Somewhere down the line some dean or chairman or payroll person didnt do their job, so we get to suffer the consequences.In short, thats why the paper you see before you is the way it is. I guess the university gets what it pays for.
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