It's not easy-or cheap-being green.
At their weekly executive meeting Tuesday night, Duke University Union members considered a funding request from the Last Day of Classes planning committee and voted to allocate an additional $5,000 toward the April 22 celebration, which has been planned to be more environmentally friendly this year. The money will come from a general fund reserved for major programming, said DUU President Zachary Perret, a junior.
"We've been working hard to get sponsorships and funding from local businesses and departments here on campus," said sophomore Karen Chen, DUU vice president of communications, who presented the LDOC funding request at the meeting. "However, even with cutting back on certain aspects of spending, we're short $10,000."
LDOC Committee Chair Merri Estren, a senior, told The Chronicle that the expenses of a "green," environmentally conscious LDOC celebration and unexpected production costs contributed to the additional need for funding. For example, Girl Talk-who will be performing on LDOC along with Mike Posner and the Brain Trust, Gym Class Heroes and Ben Folds-requested a separate stage for his performance. Estren said the plans for a green event range from organic T-shirts to modifications to the Great Hall meal.
Estren, who did not attend Tuesday's meeting, said she plans to request funding from Campus Council and other sources in order to cover the rest of the $10,000 shortfall. She said the last-minute search for funds does not necessarily indicate a shortcoming of the LDOC committee, adding that she thinks planning so far has been a success.
"I'm not hugely worried because I know that this campus has money if not in immediately obvious places," she said. "We've already had to deal with a lot of challenges and hidden costs this year.... I'm very proud of our fundraising efforts."
DUU had previously approved an initial budget allocation of $10,000 for LDOC in December, which was a smaller allocation than the previous year, Perret said. Because of the way LDOC is traditionally funded, however, the committee is given a base amount and is then required to seek additional money from both Campus Council and DUU to cover any remaining costs.
"Originally it was debated whether to give [LDOC] slightly more or whether they should come back with another proposal if they needed more, and we decided that they should come back if they needed more," Perret said.
Estren said that although a record number of companies and restaurants were contributing to LDOC, the economy's downturn may have hurt many of their corporate funding prospects.
"We were in talks with major companies like Zipcar and Red Bull that were talking about giving us several thousand dollars more," Estren said. "When the economy went bad, the companies ended up still wanting to be a part of the event, but they just decided to donate food and not give as much money."
According to the funding request presented during the meeting, LDOC is already receiving support from organizations and companies such as the Duke Sustainability Office, the Senior Gift Committee, the Duke University Stores, Panda Express and several local restaurants.
Junior Adam Barron, DUU's executive marketing co-director and a member of the LDOC committee, said LDOC should be a high priority for DUU, adding that he supports the additional $5,000 budget allocation.
"I hope in following years their base amount does increase so they don't have to go around asking groups for money, but I think it's reasonable that they come to the largest programming organization on campus to fund the largest day of programming all year," he said.
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