An eight-month-old ASUO rule entitling students to free tickets to incidental fee-paid events has not been enforced by the EMU Ticket Office because it was never informed of the rule, Director of Ticketing Services Mary Barrios said.
As a result, the ticket office, which provides tickets for several student group events such as China Night and Utsav, has never provided a student with a free ticket, Barrios said.
The ASUO rule — which is cited in the Green Tape Notebook’s Student Senate Rules — states that students don’t have to buy tickets to student group-sponsored events if the event is wholly or partially funded by student incidental fees, ASUO Controller Christina Diss said.
ASUO Controller Persis Pohowalla said the ticket office and student groups are aware of the rule, but Barrios maintains she didn’t know about it.
ASUO Student Senate Ombudsman Mike Sherman, who was on the committee that passed the rule last year, explained that it was implemented to prevent student groups from limiting event access to students who can’t afford tickets. Moreover, he said the rule was enacted to prevent student groups from double charging students because students already fund many events through their incidental fees.
Students of the Indian Subcontinent Co-Director Edwin Prasad, who organized the fee-funded Utsav celebration last Friday night, said a student senator told him SIS could charge for the whole event as long as the cost for the dinner portion was only a “suggested donation.”
Diss said groups can’t require students to pay for events, but they can ask for suggested donations to raise funds for the group.
However, ASUO Accounting Coordinator Jennifer Creighton-Neiwert said there’s no rule requiring student groups to advertise that a ticket cost is, in reality, a suggested donation.
“I think they should make it known, but it’s not a rule,” she said. “There’s not a Senate rule that says you must advertise that you can get in free.”
As a result of the rule’s loophole, student groups often don’t provide the distinction between mandatory fees and suggested donations on their promotional materials, whether on purpose or by accident.
Diss said she didn’t think failing to label a ticket price as a donation presented an ethical dilemma because if a student asked for a free ticket, he or she would receive one.
But Barrios couldn’t remember a student ever making a request for a free ticket at the ticket office, adding that if a student wanted a free ticket she would not distribute it until she checked the rules with ASUO.
Creighton-Neiwert said ASUO, student groups and the ticket office all had a shared responsibility for the miscommunication.
“I’m not sure that the ticket office knows of the new rules,” she said. “So I wouldn’t want to put full blame on the ticket office.
“I think it’s the Senate’s responsibility to hold the groups accountable for what they can and cannot do. And I think this is one area where the Senate needs to do more clarification to help the groups out.”
Sherman said he would personally inform the EMU Ticket Office of the rule.
Another rule created last year requires groups to charge students 20 percent less for suggested donations than for non-student tickets to a fee-sponsored event.
While the Chinese Student Association and the Japanese Student Association charged two rates during China Night 2004 and this year’s Japan Night, SIS charged a flat $5 rate for all tickets to Utsav.
“I didn’t find out about this rule until a few days ago,” Prasad said. “I know that in the past we’ve always charged a separate price and I always thought that was just a way to get the students to come. It’s like they make up a rule and they punish us for breaking it when we didn’t know about it.
“The ticket office should have told us when we were ordering tickets. I don’t think any of the groups know about it. The communication isn’t really there.”
Sherman didn’t say whether the Senate would punish the group because he has yet to finish talking to Senate leadership.