This thread is intended to help me fulfill two campaign promises I made while running for the office of Administrative Assistant. First, I promised to attempt to increase transparency within the organization. Second, I promised in my application to put up a thread on these forums wherein I would notify players of any issues the exec board voted on, disclose my vote, and give a brief explanation for why I voted the way I did. This will serve as that thread, and will also serve as a thread where I provide a brief summary of events from exec board meetings that will affect the players at large. Whenever there is another meeting, I will update the OP. Discussion is both welcome and encouraged.

Summary of events from exec board meeting on 5/6/2012:

1. Discussed what to do about vacant Webmaster position. An emergency election over the summer would be unlikely to lead to a multi-candidate race, so the proposed solution is to get together a panel of people interested in the position to act collectively to maintain the web space until a Webmaster can be elected.

2. Discussion of need for UGL to do its own fundraising instead of having to rely on RHA. Jose wants game admins to come up with fundraising ideas for their own games. General ideas kicked around:

Shirts - Can only realistically do them if we get our own fundraising first.
Bake sale - Need to use University kitchens due to FDA, board of health regulations.
Concession stands during HvZ invitational
Water balloon fight
- Pay to play event, not a sponsored game. Doesn't necessarily have to be on campus.
Car wash
Restaurant sponsorships

Players are welcome and encouraged to come up with their own ideas as well.

3. Community outreach - the University requires student organizations to do community outreach/charity work. Need ideas. Ones kicked around:

- Charitable Directives came up with pink bands during HvZ for breast cancer
- "Buy an extra life" in a Nerf war game if you donate x amount to charity we're fundraising for
- Run games like Dodgeball, CtF, any game where players are in one area for a long time with a donation bucket - just a bucket labeled "donations to x charity" where people can drop in change.
- Car wash

Again, players are welcome and encouraged to come up with ideas.

4. Jose has an idea for different colored bands for different UGL games. The bands would be provided by UGL for every game but HvZ and given to players to use during the game, then to be returned. This never came to a vote, but there was some discussion, and we're interested in hearing the thoughts of the players.

5. Motions voted on this meeting:

- Motion to move Battle Royale from pick-up game to sponsored game status. I voted yes, as Battle Royale has certainly moved out of beta. The motion passed unanimously.
- Motion to move UGL's University designation from "general student organization" to "recreational student organization." I voted yes, as I feel this better reflects the nature of our organization. This motion passed unanimously.
- Motion to announce University mandated dropping of "Ball State" from organization name. I voted yes - this is really just a formality, as this decision is beyond the control of our executives. The motion passed unanimously.

Truthfully, fundraising efforts are one massive teeth-pulling contest. You have to drag organizational members out to fundraising events kicking and screaming, and than you're ripping out teeth with pliers trying to get the public to give you their money. I've always felt like RHA funds should be used as a supplement to "this game REALLY shouldn't take much, if any money to run -- you should be able to make shit happen with the stuff laying around + occasional pocket change." But I guess if our players demand multi-million dollar blockbusters, I can't stop them.

I feel like the shirt thing just isn't gonna happen -- quite frankly, I was pretty surprised it worked out the first time. Honestly, I feel like we should let the t-shirt idea finally die a peaceful death. It's come up in literally every meeting I've attended since I started attending meetings and it never goes anywhere ever.

Water Balloon fight is interesting, but I wonder how one actually makes such a thing a fundraising event, and also keeps the event something people would actually attend and give us money for. On the other hand, balloons, water and fun are about the cheapest costing things we could use to fund raise. This is honestly probably our best bet as far as the ideas I've heard, at least. I bet if we set it up right, we could have a double whammy: waterballoon fight first, then refresh yourself with some....thing delicious that we happened to gouge the price on?

On the other hand, this post officially counts as "not it" for anything having to do with water balloons or water in general. And if we decide "nose goes" instead well, fuck you, I just super-glued my thumb to my nose.

The other fundraising ideas are the "classics" and aren't so great for one reason or another, but I think I'll spare you guys the full breakdown.




Really? We've been an organization for, what, 7, 8 semesters now? How is this just now getting brought to our attention?

The flip side of the coin: seriously, Ball State? *sigh*



Kudos to Charitable Directives for thinking outside of the box a little bit, but the color of the armbands isn't just some random, arbitrary thing-- it was picked with "easy to see against clothing" in mind. I don't remember specifically why we picked green for players and orange for NPC's rather than vice-versa, but making the armbands "breast cancer awareness" pink starts getting into "armbands are getting hard to see" territory -- not to mention that it's be nearly impossible to see once you have to put that armband on your head.

On top of that, you have to deal with the fact that pink just isn't a color -- seriously. What we prefer to call "pink" is just a light shade of red. It's really easy to say "neon effing green" -- it's pretty hard to fuck up neon effing green. Pink starts getting more into judgement call territory.

On top of THAT, you're now trying to distinguish "breast cancer awareness pink" from orange and white in-game and in the dark. Have fun with either dealing with that, or changing the ENTIRE system of armband colors.

ON THE OTHER HAND: The idea isn't horrible if UGL really is stuck with being forced to do some sort of "charity" thing. Despite the, admittedly, impressive hurdles I've mentioned, once those hurdles are clear, this sort of thing would satisfy this requirement, would only be a little bit of work, and wouldn't consume too much time or resources.

Honestly, the if I were to go about implementing some form of this idea, I would sell pink ribbons for breast cancer or whatever to attach as a loop onto the regular green armbands -- you tie on your armband first, then tie your pink ribbon around your green one. In this way, you're not really impacting the game with what you're doing in a particularly meaningful way, but you're still making pink ribbon armband things happen.



No.

I really don't know how better to express the no-ness of this no, but seriously: we can't just let people pay for any kind of advantage in any game. I...uh...hope this sort of thing is self-evident and I don't have to breakdown why doing this would be bad.



A fairly lazy thing we could do. I feel like we honestly just wouldn't get an meaningful results from this though.



Honestly, I still have yet to hear how this idea would be practical or helpful in any way. It sounds like it would be very pretty, and also cost us money that we're going to have trouble fundraising.

Honestly, RHA is kind of looking at us like "...What are YOU doing to raise funds for this stuff?" It's not about financing blockbusters so much as it is that if we're not doing ANY fundraising of our own, it's not really unjustified for RHA to deny us funds.



Good idea combining events. The basic funding idea for water balloon fight is something simple like "Pay a dollar for 10 balloons" or something. It also doesn't have to be JUST UGL members playing, you know...if you go to a highly public place and have a water balloon fight and advertise that you're letting anyone in that has a dollar or so, people will probably pay to play as a pick up thing.



It's a relatively new requirement.



They specifically addressed this point in their proposal, which you can see on their subforum. The proposed bands wouldn't be traditional breast cancer pink, but rather a darker pink. That way the visibility is still there and players aren't getting mistaken for NPCs.



They'd be bands specifically given out by us in exchange for breast cancer fundraising, not just "Hey cool, you donated money, go get yourself a pink band." We've got this color shit on lockdown.



Already addressed that concern.



Not a bad idea - you might want to propose that on the thread where this idea was proposed and described in detail. Remember, this is just a summary.



It would not be something you could do in a full game. We're not gonna have HvZ with buyable extra lives or something. It would be a one-time pickup Nerf war that we did specifically with fundraising in mind.



The nominal cost is low - about a buck each. I have similar qualms with the idea, though, as in practice bands are a one-time use thing - people come up with some crazy knots. In addition to this, we have to keep opportunity cost in mind: Every dollar we spend on a new band is a dollar we could spend elsewhere. Is buying different colored bands for different games the absolute best thing we could buy with those dollars?

I see. When RHA funding was originally explained to me, it was proposed to me as "hey, so there is this money that is just sitting on the table and all we really do is jump through some paperwork hoops and promise to spend it on the org, we get it.

I guess that's some perspective for ya.



Aw. Damn ye recent Ball State Administrations!




...honestly, I actually thought a darker pink would make the problem worse and not better. There's a reason we use bright, neon colors too :-p

Maybe I should take it up with them and not you though :-p



Good.



I guess that's a relief, but I still don't know how I feel about the idea. But maybe I'm just the type of guy who gets nervous when any "game," pickup or not, gets money involved. We're an emotional bunch as it is when there isn't anything at stake. And I get nervous when "being rich" provides a person with an inherent advantage in any game, pickup or not. But maybe I'm just a filthy commie.

Hmmmm.
I wonder if discussion on things brought up in meetings should be moved to a separate thread, so this one can be used solely as a running ticker of what goes on in the boardroom...

Additionally:

I hear your concerns about teeth-pulling and would like to show you several new pairs of pliers that I have invested in. I understand that fundraising is going to be a difficult endeavor that may take forever to actually yield return, but considering that our organization currently has a pretty substantial negative balance, its no longer about taking easy roads. Besides, you could say that I have been inspired to do even less "taking the easy road"-ing than I ever did, given recent events. I have a personal goal of seeing this organization well into the black before I leave office, and it's high time that got going.

On the T-shirts, I will apologize in advance for not being content to "just let it die." The PR staff has worked hard designing prints and logos, and T-shirts are a glorious means of advertising that requires little or no effort to use and reuse. While we have indeed experienced hefty difficulties in the past, I do intend to see that it gets off the ground, and will continue to push it as hard as I can. Quite honestly, the only reason the previous print has an edge over me is that I have not had the personal funds to invest in this to the degree it needs.

On the pink bands, I had anticipated using a rather bright NEON PINK color for these, rather than the traditional pastels that many organizations use. Given that these would be distributed BY us, we can regulate their color and size such that they will in all likelihood stand out even more than the green ones, and I do not forsee any issues with distinguishing them from the orange and white that we are accustomed to, but that has other reasons to it. One thing I AM curious about is whether we should require them back afterward, so that we may redistribute each game and continue to raise money without continual cost, or if the players that purchase the right to wear them deserve to keep them as souvenirs that they paid for.

On the colors, to be honest, the reason that no concrete decision was made here is that this is very early in its planning stages. This is inevitably a large undertaking, and fraught with logistical concerns. The move has a goal of minimizing players necessary supplies while maximizing distingushability of individual games from each other, and allowing us to recruit from the street more freely, even where games do require bands. CtF has served as a testing bed for community bands in the past, and will more than likely continue to pioneer our efforts to establish reusable community bands that will serve to meet our needs without being a massive revolving cost, or requiring dependency on other organizations, as the Recreation "pennies" do.

Fun fact, yellow-green is actually the most visible color on the spectrum in low lighting, where as red-orange is the most difficult to see.

The more you knoooow

Why not do something like the dog tag thing for blops?
You pay x dollars and get a dog tag.
Could buy one for every game like souvenirs. Could be used to show veteran status

We are actually using the BlOps dog tags partially as fundraising. We're doing a 60/40 split where some is earmarked for Black Ops, specifically, and some is put in a general UGL fund. The goal here is to make all games self sufficient, but have a general fund to pay expenses for those that can't fund themselves.

I meant more do it as an HvZ thing. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would buy something like that if it was reasonably priced

Ah. That would be the official HvZ bandanas sold at the invitational and the Atrium table.