I don’t mean to harsh everyone’s Ohio State mellow, but there was an Alumni Association Alumni Council meeting last Friday that we need to report out on.
First up is the completely WTF!? statement by PSU Trustee Kay Salvino. She was on hand all day Thursday and Friday, and if you were special enough to be invited to the Alumni Association skybox at Beaver Stadium (price tag north of $60,000/year) you could see her there, too.
Kay made it a point on at least two occasions to emphatically state that the "The Alumni Association is not a scholarship entity” and “The Alumni Association is not in the business of getting students scholarships”. Which must be news to all the Penn State Alumni Chapters working their butts off to raise money for scholarships so that local kids can go to Penn State.
I’m very curious to hear anyone from the Alumni Association (or from whatever planet Kay is from) explain exactly what she was talking about. Last time I checked, PSAA supports several scholarships and is planning to support more. In fact, many members would point to this as the only redeeming quality the Alumni Association has.
Kay also reported about what it’s like to be on the Board of Trustees. “It’s cool!” She’s thinks it’s neat that she can sit in on committee meetings, and they let her represent the BOT at various places, and then there was something about engineers, and the color orange, and it was really neat that when they said "how many are from engineering?" and half the room stood up, and it was cool! The dinners are great, and there’s receptions, and … then our representative’s heads exploded so they couldn’t take any more notes. So much for the Alumni Association needing a seat on the BOT to promote the interests of the alumni.
This year we again attempted to give unused Alumni Council gratis football tickets to Penn State student-veterans. Deb Beidel collected them until an AA staffer stopped her (“tickets are not transferable!”), but she managed to smuggle a few out anyway.
Some bad news was announced, and since I haven’t seen it reported anywhere else I’ll help them out – membership is down by 7,500 members (see attached chart), almost all in the dues-paying category. Life memberships stayed stagnant, with only 134 sold so far this fiscal year.
In other news, Alumni Council is now at 99 members, which ranks it 136th out of 234 national legislatures, right between Botswana and Latvia (both of whom have all their seats elected). If you’re wondering how anything meaningful happens in a governing body of this size the answer is, it doesn’t. There were no votes taken and no deliberation of any kind, but CEO Paul Clifford did interview a fly fisherman for forty-five minutes. I’m not sure this is exactly what the IRS has in mind when they’re told Alumni Council is the governing body of the AA.
Our eleven alumni council representatives sat through an agenda that was designed to circumvent any meaningful discussion and featured a mind-numbing series of presentations that could have been emailed out before hand. Please join me in thanking them for laying out a lot of money for the privilege of going to this meeting and making an effort. Once again they were muffled, disrespected, and given no opportunity to make any meaningful contribution.
But they tried.
First up is the completely WTF!? statement by PSU Trustee Kay Salvino. She was on hand all day Thursday and Friday, and if you were special enough to be invited to the Alumni Association skybox at Beaver Stadium (price tag north of $60,000/year) you could see her there, too.
Kay made it a point on at least two occasions to emphatically state that the "The Alumni Association is not a scholarship entity” and “The Alumni Association is not in the business of getting students scholarships”. Which must be news to all the Penn State Alumni Chapters working their butts off to raise money for scholarships so that local kids can go to Penn State.
I’m very curious to hear anyone from the Alumni Association (or from whatever planet Kay is from) explain exactly what she was talking about. Last time I checked, PSAA supports several scholarships and is planning to support more. In fact, many members would point to this as the only redeeming quality the Alumni Association has.
Kay also reported about what it’s like to be on the Board of Trustees. “It’s cool!” She’s thinks it’s neat that she can sit in on committee meetings, and they let her represent the BOT at various places, and then there was something about engineers, and the color orange, and it was really neat that when they said "how many are from engineering?" and half the room stood up, and it was cool! The dinners are great, and there’s receptions, and … then our representative’s heads exploded so they couldn’t take any more notes. So much for the Alumni Association needing a seat on the BOT to promote the interests of the alumni.
This year we again attempted to give unused Alumni Council gratis football tickets to Penn State student-veterans. Deb Beidel collected them until an AA staffer stopped her (“tickets are not transferable!”), but she managed to smuggle a few out anyway.
Some bad news was announced, and since I haven’t seen it reported anywhere else I’ll help them out – membership is down by 7,500 members (see attached chart), almost all in the dues-paying category. Life memberships stayed stagnant, with only 134 sold so far this fiscal year.
In other news, Alumni Council is now at 99 members, which ranks it 136th out of 234 national legislatures, right between Botswana and Latvia (both of whom have all their seats elected). If you’re wondering how anything meaningful happens in a governing body of this size the answer is, it doesn’t. There were no votes taken and no deliberation of any kind, but CEO Paul Clifford did interview a fly fisherman for forty-five minutes. I’m not sure this is exactly what the IRS has in mind when they’re told Alumni Council is the governing body of the AA.
Our eleven alumni council representatives sat through an agenda that was designed to circumvent any meaningful discussion and featured a mind-numbing series of presentations that could have been emailed out before hand. Please join me in thanking them for laying out a lot of money for the privilege of going to this meeting and making an effort. Once again they were muffled, disrespected, and given no opportunity to make any meaningful contribution.
But they tried.
