Public Letter to SGA

First I want to say, as one of the few Alumni that the Gaming Club has, I have never been so proud of this (our) Gaming Club. Voice of Reason, obviously does not spend time on this forum or he would not have called out those people he chose to call out. I want to also say that I agree 150% with everything our members have said about everything on this forum. Though we have only been around for 3 years not 4. So we wouldn’t logically have that many alumni. Oh, and we have had many Professors to come to our LAN’s as well. To start naming names: Dr. Barbara Jo White, Dr. Ronnie Stillwell, and Dr. William Richmond, just to name a few.

Second, I want to point out that this is not the first time SGA has asked for more information about where our money goes. Just wanted to point that out, as some one that has dealt with SGA for a number of Organizations. I also want to point out, that if as the Voice of Reason said SGA is comprised of entirely new people. Except for of course the one person whom we have gone to for the past 8 LANs, why then would she not know the changes that SGA had made to the process of accessing money that SGA had awarded us? Strangely puzzling.

Third, Kappmerc You’ve hit the nail on the head. Shane, we need to get a detailed list of all expenses this club has incurred since its conception this is to include the cost of prizes, food, drinks, advertising, trips to App, Servers, software, hosting, website design and maintainence, etc. I’ll help you for the first 2 years as I was in charge of it. Second, we need to get a detailed list of all students that transfered to this school because of this club. Third, we need to get a detailed list of all student that did not transfer out of this school because of this club, meaning they planned on transferring before they joined this club. Fourth, we need to meet with Keith Corzine. SGA has never liked us having ResLife as a sponsor, and I can say this as I have it on first hand knowledge that this is so, I can name names of who said what and when they said if need be. Once you have all this information, meet with Keith Corzine and ITS. See what they think we should do. We do not need to upset SGA. But as the Voice of Reason also said, sorry buddy you should have reworded it, once we become financially stable then they will help us. Well once we become financially stable, as many of you pointed out, we wont need SGA funding. But I would also like to say, we as a club should go to the Vice Chancelor of Student Affairs and demand our funding back as we pay a pretty penny to SGA, and if SGA won’t give it back to us, then they should have to refund our money as it is not fulfilling its purpose as a club.

You want us to fund raise, and host even more events. Well I agree we can do more fundraising. I have suggested many things we can do to fundraise. But host even more events. This clearly was not thought out when you wrote it. I am not attacking you. But if we need $200 from SGA to pay for one of our LAN events, and it costs us an additional $600 to host a LAN party, what makes you think we can come up with an additional $1800 per semester? That is not to say that it is even possible to host 4 a semester. It takes 2 months of solid planning and contacting sponsors, and getting SGA to let us have the money they allotted us, and preparing, and setting up and getting power and getting tables, getting chairs, getting SO MANY THINGS. Ask anyone, I am one of the FEW along with the founders and past and current executives that really know this club and know what it takes to have a LAN event.

I do want to address this statement: “I hope you don’t mind me asking, MasterP (and Mr. Panetta, the Northeastern student making utterly incorrect and unfounded claims against WCU’s SGA), but what have you as members of the Gaming Club done to promote your organization’s financial sustainability?” Let’s see what have Adam and I contributed to this club, where to start. We are two of the founders of this club, so what have we contributed to this club… We have paid more for this club that SGA.

So if SGA has paid thousands of dollars, which I know to be incorrect, SGA has at most given $500 per semester *5 semesters=$2,500. Check your records, this is more than what was awarded because we didn’t get $500 this year.

Let’s see,

we pay for hosting, $30*36=$1,080 for the Server,

$50*36=1,800 for the Ventrilo Server,

$100*3=$300 trips to Appalachian’s LANs for several WCU Gaming Club Executives,

$Matching Contributions to whatever the gaming club raised for the new sever (if we raised about 1,500, we match that)= at least $1,500,

$Lan event prizes=$500 (100*5 LANs)

=5,600

Other Large Contributions we should be reimbursed for:

Website design and maintainence x 2: $20,000 (this includes Adam Faulkner’s Time, Tyler Schryver’s Time, Derrick Lebrocq’s Time, GXTI’s Time, plus others time) To have a website build to this complexity and with this much depth costs atleast $10,000 per website, and we have built two completely different websites.

Flyer and Banner Designs $100 x10 LANS: $1,000

=$21,000

Again, we need to get this information together so that when we say we spend atleast $800 per LAN we have actual documentation we can show as proof. I don’t want to hear that the members of this club DO NOT financially support this club. Because we contribute more than SGA.

And please call Adam Faulkner as this Club was his idea, he is the one that talked ResLife into spending $10,000 for the server we use, and paying for all of our food, drinks, and banners and flyers for every LAN we have ever had and hopefully will ever have. Reslife unlike SGA understands our purpose. We are here to bring potential students to WCU and to retain students at WCU. We are one of the few clubs that can actually say we do that.

On that note, it’s probably important to point out that when prospective students apply for WCU they are asked about certain factors about the school that helped them decide. The Gaming Club is not on that list and there is no fill-in-the-blank selection where they could put the Gaming Club. This is probably something admissions should change, considering that we ARE pulling students in.