Student discount cards come to campus

With tuition and student fees increasing this year, shopping and eating out aren’t always in the cards. But Georgia College’s Student Government Association has plan to help students save money. 

Beginning the week of Homecoming, students will receive a free discount card offering deals at 27 businesses around Milledgeville.

SGA President Evan Karanovich says that after talking with fellow SGA presidents at Albany State, Savannah State and The University of Georgia, who have also implemented the discount cards on their campus, and the SGA Executive Board, he decided to move forward and create the card.

“The problem we have, like in college towns, is you have a lot of companies and businesses that offer discounts. But the problem we have as students is that we don’t know which ones they are,” Karanovich said.

Bruce Twersky, owner of College Discount Cards, contacted Karanovich about the possibility of GC utilizing the discount cards and ten days later Karanovich decided to pursue the project.

“I completed signing up the businesses for the card within one month,” Twersky said. “This is the largest number of participating businesses I’ve ever had on a card on all my 25 campuses.”

Kyle Cullars, assistant vice president of auxiliary services, says that upon the start of the project Karanovich met with him to discuss the discount card and gave some input on who to ask to be represented on the card.

“I did tell him that I would appreciate them contacting all of our Bobcat Card merchants because we already have a relationship with those merchants, and it gives them an opportunity to make sure that they’re at least invited to be part of the card,” Cullars said. “And then also to talk with our own campus retail dining areas to see if they want to take part as well.”

A total of 12 off campus vendors out of fourteen that accept Bobcat

Cards agreed to feature their deals on the new discount card. Deals such as 10 percent off at Asian Bistro, free chips and salsa at Chili’s, and 10 percent off at Jack and Darcy are a few that students can take advantage of.

Five thousand discount cards, costing $1 a piece to print, were ordered to distribute to the college campus. The cards will be paid for using funds from the SGA special projects budget, which has $13,414.95 of available funds. Karanovich says that although $5,000 is a big investment he believes that it will have a huge return.

“We thought, as an Executive Board, that this would be a huge return on the investment,” Karanovich said. “It cost some money up front, but the cost saving is huge.”

Members of SGA will be at several of the Homecoming events handing out the cards to students. However, the card will still be available to students all year long.

“We will give out 5,000 cards hopefully between now and the end of the year,” Karanovich said. “Whatever we have left we can give those to incoming freshmen and the hope is that each freshman class will get a card and the campus will get a new card every year.”

Emily Lawson, freshman undeclared major, says she is excited about receiving her discount card.

“The discount sounds like a really good idea. Its an easy way to save money on campus and in Milledgeville,” Lawson said. “I think it’s a good idea because the amount of money that the businesses around here will get is more than that just with even a simple 10 percent off discount, its worth it.”

Posted by Lauren Davidson on Jan 19 2012. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.