After some debate, the ASUI Senate decided to designate Dance Marathon as their permanent fall philanthropy Wednesday in order to establish consistency and further the event’s success.
ASUI Pro-Tempore Mattie Cupps said each semester ASUI must hold a philanthropy event so the organization can be “more visible in the Moscow area.” As the senate’s pro-tempore, Cupps is in charge of orchestrating the event.
She said in previous semesters, ASUI held Dance Marathon, where more than $5,000 was raised for the Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane.
“This is one of the biggest philanthropies that ASUI has ever done, our past events … haven’t been that visible, and I believe that it is really important to not only have a visible philanthropy, but one that brings all the community — campus and Moscow-wide — together,” Cupps said.
She said the event went so well last semester, that she drafted a bill to established Dance Marathon as ASUI’s fall philanthropic effort, because she wanted to ensure ASUI continued to organize the event.
Sen. Clayton Zimmerman spoke against the bill, initially, and said he didn’t want to limit ASUI to this one event because “trends come and go,” so he pushed for a sunset clause, which would amend the bill to have no effect after a specific date, unless further legislative action is taken to extend it.
Sen. Briggs Jackson said he, too, thought about implementing the clause, but concluded since the event only occurred once a year, it wasn’t necessary because it didn’t require continuous monitoring.
“We always have the opportunity to review it without introducing the amendment, if we want,” Jackson said.
Zimmerman rebutted and said the bill would only muddle the ASUI Rules and Regulations with superfluous language, and believed if it didn’t need ongoing review, it wasn’t needed at all, since it “might not last.”
Sen. George Wood said he also briefly considered the sunset clause, but like Jackson, decided against it.
“For a program to be able to truly flourish, it does have to grow and it does have to happen for multiple years,” Wood said. “If it turns out that this is not something that is a successful philanthropy in future years, it would be fairly easy to eliminate it.”
Sen. Bailey Morris also questioned the bill and said she believed if the pro-tempore is already in charge of organizing the ASUI philanthropies, it wasn’t necessary to pick a specific one, especially if other causes are deemed more worthy later on.
Cupps said she doesn’t want a future pro-tempore to “fall back on less visible philanthropies,” which she believed would happen without the passage of the bill.
“It’s easy to plan that we are going to go to the horse ranch, and we are going to build a fence. OK, cool, that takes no effort, and that’s awesome, but … you aren’t visible, you aren’t including everyone (and) you aren’t showing what ASUI can do,” Cupps said.
Cupps said it is also important to establish consistency with philanthropies, so the public knows what to expect.
“If we introduce a new thing every two, three years, we are never going to make it big,” Cupps said. “People aren’t going to be as excited about it, and I think that building up on campus can only make our philanthropy better and only make us more visible.”
Olivia Heersink can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @heersinkolivia