The American Advertising Federation Ad Club will seek other avenues of fundraising before returning to the Student Senate, ASUO officials said Monday.
Representatives from Ad Club have attended the past two Senate meetings to request funds from surplus because they have no budget for the year. The group’s leadership last year failed to go through the budgeting process. Now the group has no money to prepare for a major competition in the spring, and its leaders are more than stressed about how they will move forward.
Senate Ombudsman Patrick Boye said he met with the group’s leaders on Monday. “I think the situation isn’t as dire as they thought it would be,” he said.
Boye said he and club representatives Sabrina DeMartini and Carolyn Bee met to discuss ways the club can raise money before again requesting surplus funds. Senators have yet to back their surplus requests and ASUO President Emily McLain threatened to veto.
Boye said fundraising ideas include co-sponsorships from larger groups or departments that have money to share. Ad Club may also write letters to family, friends and alumni asking for donations. The group plans to meet with Tim Gleason, dean of the School of Journalism and Communication, to see how he can help.
Gleason was out of town Monday and unaware of the situation, he said in a telephone interview. He said he would be happy to meet with the club, which he called an important part of the school, but he would rather see funding come from student government.
It’s not that Ad Club and the Senate haven’t tried. At last Wednesday’s Senate meeting, debate about the club’s surplus request lasted nearly 45 minutes and DeMartini was on the verge of tears, waving a thick black binder full of the work she has put in to prepare for an advertising competition that she said is a tremendous networking opportunity for students. It is possible to leave the competition and get a job with Nike or advertising giant Wieden and Kennedy, she said.
“I think it’s hard for my fellow senators to understand the situation that they’re in,” Boye said. A public relations major and an academic senator representing the journalism school, Boye empathizes with the pressures of building an ad campaign, he said. During last week’s meeting, Boye said the group had “been punished enough.” Their request for $10,000 from the week before had been reduced to $7,005 and resubmitted. Senators whittled it down to $3,700 before voting it down. Boye advocated giving Ad Club the funds.
But Sen. Steven Wilsey, also a journalism major, disagreed. Wilsey sat on the Programs Finance Committee last year and he said funding a group through surplus would set a dangerous precedent, even for a group that had been funded by the ASUO for decades.
“It wasn’t that we didn’t want to see it get funded, it’s that it was the wrong place to get funding from,” he said. Wilsey said he thinks the group will have little trouble finding other avenues for raising funds.
“There are a lot of people out there who will donate money to these sorts of things,” he said.
Gleason said he couldn’t speak to the possibility of sending letters to alumni because he was unfamiliar with the situation. But he did say that Ad Club has received ASUO funding for all of his 11 years at the University.
“For an organization that has been historically funded there should be a way for student government to continue its funding,” he said.
Bee, the co-organizer of the club, has repeatedly declined to comment to the Emerald, saying the group as a whole does not want to discuss the situation publicly.
Club adviser Dave Koranda said the situation seemed better on Monday that it had in the past, but he was frustrated with the entire process.
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