New GCSU sponsorship policy could benefit RSOs

GCSU’s sponsorship policy could be seeing a facelift in the near future. A new sponsorship policy aiming to replace the current one has been developed and is currently awaiting a decision by the University Senate, which will not formally hear the policy until next school year.

This policy allows Registered Student Organizations and departments on campus to do what they need to do in terms of fundraising and holding events without compromising the existing contracts GCSU holds with businesses, according to Kyle Cullars, the executive director of Auxiliary Services.

“The general policy is no private businesses are allowed to advertise on campus – period,” Cullars said.

The original policy was created after companies, particularly banks, were constantly soliciting GCSU students for things such as credit card offers. According to Cullars, this happened across campus and eventually, the university felt it was inappropriate as a higher education institution.

The sponsorship policy requires RSOs to get approval from the Department of Campus Life before any solicitation of sponsorships, donations or fundraising efforts begin. The policy also prohibits sponsorships from businesses in direct competition with the services provided by GCSU or its contracted vendors.

However, donations from vendors in direct competition with GCSU’s contracted vendors can be solicited or accepted if authorized by the Office of University Advancement and Business and Finance, and if accepted, that vendor is not allowed advertising rights.

The idea to revise the sponsorship policy began in the Student Government Association. Its revised policy passed through SGA and has since been sent to the university to be reviewed by a subcommittee.

Paul Danaj, a junior international economics major and SGA senator, helped develop the new policy in SGA. After reading the current policy, which is 12 pages long, Danaj and other SGA senators were left feeling that it contradicted itself and was filled with red tape and legal jargon. They began by asking Cullars and SGA President Zach Mullins what they wanted out of the policy and highlighting the parts of the policy they felt were important.

“We decided to broaden it and change our language so that it would be easily adapted to a university scale,” Danaj said. “We tried to make it pretty straightforward. We took it from 12 to two pages with two appendices.”

According to Danaj, those working on the policy originally wanted it to have an open-door policy where “anyone could ask for anything.” However, after looking at the details, some of which were legal due to contracts, they found it was almost impossible for it to happen.

The revised policy, however, is not looking to change the current sponsorship policy in a major way. Its purpose is to better clarify the policy and its conditions.

One problem the SGA committee saw while working on the revision was that many campus organizations were unaware of the policy and were unintentionally going through loopholes.

Cullars said the only big change in the policy is that it gives clear definitions the organizations will need to know. It also gives specific examples of the vendors the university has a contract with, something the old policy was too vague about.

“Student organizations I think a lot of the times wanted to do what was right, but they didn’t quite understand what was permitted and what wasn’t,” Cullars said.

One thing the new policy did was add clear definitions and two appendices that outline the types of services provided by the university as well as specific contracted vendors. One appendix even specifically names the businesses the university is currently under contractual agreements with, such as Coca-Cola, Chick-fil-A and Mac-Gray Laundry Services. Therefore, RSOs and other campus departments cannot solicit or accept sponsorships from companies in direct competition with them.

The policy does allow a couple exceptions. GCSU’s student media is exempt, due to first amendment rights, as is the athletics department.

“In the past, athletics was allowed to do some things on their own because they have to generate their own support for the teams and the uniforms and athletic events, so they were not bound by necessarily the same provisions as the rest of campus,” Cullars said.

Cullars has been a big supporter in creating and passing the new policy.

“Our office ends up being the one that polices what takes place, so we’d love to have something in concrete that we can know what we’re enforcing,” Cullars said. “We have an invested interest in trying to protect those contracts and make sure that we, as a university, are not violating the stipulations in those contracts.”

Posted by Allison Bramlett on Apr 9 2010. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry