This post has nothing to do with running

So, yeah. If you're looking for running knowledge, move along.

I'm the co- president for the Tommies & Katies relay for life. Co- president because our school does Relay with St. Kate's, a local all girls college; I think I mentioned that already. Anyways, we were dealt a big blow on Tuesday (at least I think it was Tuesday). I met with our Campus Life rep, who is a temp filling in for our normal campus life rep who is out on maternity leave. I met with our old campus life rep twice before she left, and she had us convinced we were green lighted for Relay and everything was on the straight and narrow. However, when I met with this new woman on Tuesday, she said that we really needed to get our s*** together.

Campus passe this new purchasing policy stating that all food used at St. Thomas events must be purchased through "preferred" vendors (in quotes because no one actually prefers them). Anyways, this new person says we must purchase all the food used at relay through campus catering, which is another caveat of the purchasing policy. I can, and did, tell them that "unfortunately, that's not happening" in a few more words in a meeting with the director of campus life on Friday. She said she would try hard to lobby for an exception, but I'm 95% sure thats going to come back in the negative, and that's fine, because I don't think that will pertain to our event, and here's why: (1) Its called the purchasing policy for a reason. Relay is a donation- driven event, so purchasing anything doesn't make sense since our (notice how I said our, not my) operation runs on a song and a lark. If we purchase anything, it will most likely be out of my pocket or from donation money, and I'll go so far as to put my educational career on the line before the latter happens. Since we're not purchasing anything, the policy should not apply to us, its that simple

(2) Relay For Life isn't a St. Thomas event. Its an American Cancer Society event. As far as I'm concerned, St. Thomas isn't even responsible for planning it. Since we work in conjunction with St. Kate's, you could just take us out of the equation, and then where would we be? Well, Relay would be an outside event being held at St. Thomas, making it not subject to the purchasing policy. It already is, technically, since its an ACS event, but just for clarity's sake. (3) really? Is St. Thomas catering really going to provide enough food for 500 people for 12 hours, and for free? Lets be honest, they won't, and there are businesses willing to do it.

Another issue is monetary and material (non- food) donations. For some reason, St. Thomas wants us to run the donations we're planning to get by them before we get them. There are plenty of problems with that too, not the least of which is that we're not really in a position to ask for specific things from specific companies. So, I think I'm just going to hand campus a big ass document of every business imaginable and every item imaginable. I don't think I'll actually do that, but I think you see where I'm going with that. The reason they gave me was for tax reasons. Obviously, businesses who donate want their donations to be tax deductible. However, since St. Thomas never sees the donations, I have no idea why they could oppose donations on those grounds.

As usual, when I met with campus life on Friday, they threatened to pull our funding if we didn't follow the policies. The meeting was eerily similar to a meeting I had with the same person about a year ago about the future of Sigma Chi at St. Thomas (as far as threats go). I've been through this song and dance before.

In case you're interested, here's the purchasing policy
And here's the link to our Relay site