Tuesday, August 19th 2014 | uccexpress.ie | Volume 18 | Issue 1
Image: Emmet Curtin
R&G week fundraising halved despite full-time Ents role Barry Aldworth | News Editor Following on from a highly successful Raise and Give Week in 2013, last February’s incarnation of the annual event has raised €20,000 for three well-known charities, Breakthrough Cancer Research, the Cope Foundation and the Children’s Ward at Cork University Hospital. However this figure amounted to less than half of the €42,000 raised by the event a year previous.
focus on alcohol while increasing the previous year’s record fundraising total, R&G Week raised the least money since 2011. However, unlike previous years, the UCC Students’ Union Entertainment Officer for the 2013/14 academic year, James Murray, was the first to take payment for the non-sabbatical role.
The €20,000 R&G Week fund was supplemented by a charity boxing night last November, which aimed to raise €20,000 alone, but reached only a fraction of that target.
Previous Entertainment Officers had accepted the position as an unpaid, part-time role; however the Students’ Union told the UCC Express last year that a referendum held four years ago allowed for the position to be paid €10,500 over a period of six months, from September until the end of February.
Thus, despite efforts to remove the
Murray’s decision to accept payment
for the role did not come without controversy, as at the time the UCCSU failed to produce a copy of its constitution to verify that a change to the definition of the Ents Officer role had been passed by UCC students.
Ents Officer paid €10,500 for first time While the decline in money raised by the event may have been expected given that 2013’s figure of €42,000 far exceeded the amount raised by any post-Celtic Tiger year, the failure to minimise the decline may reignite the debate over the Ents role being paid.
In addition, the success of charitable societies in raising funds through events without the alcohol stigma and risk of damage to areas surrounding the college may force a questioning of whether R&G Week still fulfills its principle purpose. Several non-SU events proved that the UCC population are more than willing to dip into their pockets. For example, last year the flagship event of the UCC Cancer Society, Relay for Life, raised in excess of €45,000 in aid of the Irish Cancer Society. This, despite the fact that the event took place just one week after R&G Week, when students had already been asked to dig deep for charity. Efforts were made to contact both
James Murray and previous SU president, Padraig Haughney, in relation to the matter but neither made any comment about the R&G Week total, or the controversy surrounding Ents Officer becoming a paid role.
R&G Week fundraising falls by €22,000
With preparations already getting underway for R&G Week 2015, the new UCCSU may face the unexpected challenge of trying to re-establish the event’s status as UCC’s fundraising kingpin.