Picnic Day budgeted to garner $11,586 in revenue for the association

Picnic Day, the largest student-run event in the nation, will no longer be financially subsidized by ASUCD, according to next year’s budget. All funding for Picnic Day will now be provided through other means, primarily corporate sponsorships, which the unit has had in the past.

Last year, the subsidy that ASUCD paid to Picnic Day was $5,140. Next year, Picnic Day is planned to generate revenue for the association.

“Not only are we not receiving the subsidy that we did last year, but we have a negative subsidy of $11,586,” said Grace Scott, the Picnic Day chair from 2014 to 2016. “That is what Picnic Day, as a unit, will give back to the reserves.”

ASUCD Controller Joseph DeAngelo explained that every unit is being asked to make and save money. Since Picnic Day earned more than was budgeted last year, he wrote the budget with Picnic Day earning money for the association.

“This year, every unit is being asked to make money and every unit is being asked to save money,” DeAngelo said. “We took Picnic Day’s projected income from $30,500 in 2015-16 to $47,600. The way we arrived at this number was that I looked at actuals from the past four years. The biggest jump [in the budget] was in this business sponsorship income. $15,000 was originally projected, but the unit had done $27,000 so I put them at $30,000. […]  It is a realistic goal. They are doing $27,000, why would we put them back at $15,000?”

Picnic Day’s expense budget was decreased, but only marginally, according to DeAngelo.

“We did not really cut their expenses,” DeAngelo said. “Their expenses really only took a 10 percent cut. We did not get rid of any positions; we actually increased all of their positions stipends in accordance with the 12.5 percent that we are doing across the board. That is to comply with the mandate from Student Affairs. Their expenses, if you look at 2015-2016, were $23,314 and final approved [for 2016-17] were $21,945.”

Having a budget cut and having to earn money for ASUCD is not how Scott intended Picnic Day’s overage in fundraising to be used.

“Part of that budget surplus is that we wanted to reinvest in our unit and purchase more supplies and obviously you need more income to do that,” Scott said. “That is one of the things about being in ASUCD; every year, our budget seems to come under more and more scrutiny as the event gets larger and larger.”

Since Picnic Day has had sponsorships before, they have a model in place of how to run them.

“Some [sponsors] are campus partners like CAAA [the Cal Aggie Alumni Association], but a lot of them are corporate sponsors,” Scott said. “We have a sponsorship package and it has different levels: platinum, gold, silver, [et cetera]. We look first to local sponsors and then to larger sponsors to fill in the voids in our budget.”

Another concern is how this budgeting affects the spirit of the event.

“Picnic Day serves in my mind a dual function,” Scott said. “The first function is to put on an awesome event. It was […] voted The Aggie’s Best Event in Davis. The other function is aligned with ASUCD’s 2020 vision to give students an opportunity to learn and grow and be a part of something on campus. With these budget cuts, especially across other units, it doesn’t feel like that.”

Chelsea Hernandez, the incoming Picnic Day chair for 2016-17, is concerned about how much work the student who is in charge of fundraising will have to accomplish.

“My biggest concern is the well-being of the student who has to raise all that money,” Hernandez said. “It is really stressful to plan Picnic Day. It is not just that one day that everyone sees, it is eight months of planning for the director. Even though it is a long period of time, we do have deadlines in order to prepare everything. Honestly, I know we reached [$27,000], but a lot of that was last-minute. We had two businesses come the week of Picnic Day.”

Another Picnic Day planner, former vice chair Annette Nguyen, sees this increase in revenue becoming unsustainable in years to come.

“For the next year [and] the immediate year following, we are going to be okay,” Nguyen said. “We have had budget cuts year to year for the past few years and regardless of the increased amount we are expected to raise, we have always met that goal. I think our concern is more with the upcoming years in the future because I feel like every year they ask for more you meet [the goal], and then because that goal is met, they keep increasing [the target].”

DeAngelo has considered this fear while crafting the current budget.

“These are realistic income projections,” DeAngelo said. “At the end of the day, why would I project an unrealistic number? That would only hurt the association. If we were projecting fake money, that would only hurt us. When that money was not made, we would be relying on it. It would not behoove anyone to put something [in the budget] that I do not think they could meet.”

Written by: Kenton Goldsby – campus@theaggie.org

New university proposals seek to accommodate increase in student enrollment

On May 16, UC Davis released an update to its Long Range Development Plan (LRDP), a list of requirements used to outline the campus growth and community needs of the school by 2027.

“The goal of the proposed plan is to keep UC Davis compact and keep people connected,” said Bob Segar, assistant vice chancellor for Campus Planning and Community Resources, in a press release.

The LRDP lays out a plan to accommodate the increase in student enrollment capacity, which currently stands at 32,130 students. It is set to increase by 6,870 more students, while faculty capacity is set to increase by 2,405 to 14,500 members.

“They’re looking at the number of students we expect to accommodate in the coming years and they’re looking at how that divides up around the campus and what the demand is likely to be,” said Andy Fell, associate director of news and media relations. “The long range is about, ‘how do we plan for the future of the campus given the expected enrollment growth?’, and that goes along with more facilities, more faculty, more classrooms and so on.”

The plan is an update from the 2013-15 LRDP and emphasizes environmental and financial sustainability as well as promotes compact growth.

Lucas Griffith, the university’s campus planner, said that the proposed increase in housing will alleviate some of the current issues with finding living spaces in the city.

“The big issue in town is student housing,” Griffith said. “If we grow, where are all these students going to live? The housing market in Davis is 0.2 vacancy rate, so it’s really difficult to find a location to live in town and if we grow by 6,000 students and didn’t provide any campus housing, then our student body would be a commuting student body, and for a variety of reasons we value a local community.”

Currently, the university is looking at different locations on campus for developing new housing, including West Village, Orchard Park, Russell Field and Solano Gateway. The university currently houses 29 percent of UC Davis students but hopes to increase that number to 40 percent.

“If you live on campus you bike, you bus, you walk and you can live car-free,” Griffith said. “That is exactly what we need to be doing in climate change. That’s incredibly sustainable, but there’s also a community value of living on campus. You’re able to participate in more social programs, whether it’s a club or campus rec or you’re able to engage more classmates to do school work on a Saturday or Sunday.”

The plan is a part of three documents, including the Physical Design Framework and the Ten-Year Capital Plan, that each campus in the University of California system creates. All proposals must be signed off by the regents.

Written by: Ivan Valenzuela –campus@theaggie.org

Bookstore to include UC Davis-branded selfie chair, Amazon center, extended art supply section

The newly renovated bookstore at the Memorial Union (MU) is slated to have a soft opening on June 6 in anticipation of the grand opening at the beginning of Fall Quarter.

The soft opening will give full access to the store and the new Amazon center. The temporary bookstore set up at the ARC Pavilion closed on May 13 in preparation for the opening of the new MU bookstore.

Improvements to the bookstore include additional space, improved structural integrity and an updated interior design. The store will also have an Amazon location that will be fully staffed and provide a space for students to order, pickup or return Amazon purchases.

The upstairs portion of the bookstore will feature UC Davis apparel, the boutique area, the Amazon store, books from campus authors, UC Davis-pressed olive oil, a new seating area with charging stations for students and a new snack line called Aggie Snacks, which will consist of UC Davis-branded snacks such as trail mix, crackers and candy.

“The boutique [is] going to have a lot of fun items: items that are blue and gold, unimprinted clothing, lots of branded jewelry and Kate Spade [items],” said Carol Swafford, the project manager, in an email interview.

The bookstore will also sell Smashbox beauty products in addition to the Clinique line already sold at the store in order to provide students with more variety. The beauty products will be located in the new boutique area.

“I went to go visit Oklahoma State this year and Smashbox is just killing it there. So the more that we looked into Smashbox, the more we had to go with them,” Swafford said. “We’re not ready to give up our relationship with Clinique, so we’ll do both. But we’re doing Clinique on a smaller scale than we used to.”

UC Davis store partnered up with the college apparel company League to make a new UC Davis clothing line, which will feature new designs and softer shirts. League also made an exclusive chair and lamp that will be showcased in the bookstore. It is one of only two League chairs in the country, with the other chair at Arizona State University.

“[The chair] is custom upholstered with our fleece fabric that is used on [other products] in the store. It is supposed to be a selfie chair. We made it to make the bookstore a destination,” said Lauren Brown, a representative from League.

For the first time, the clothing department of the store will have dressing rooms, a request made by students when the bookstore was being designed.

The downstairs portion of the bookstore will house textbooks, lab supplies and an extended school, office and art supplies section. This is the first time in many years that the bookstore will offer a wide variety of art supplies.

According to UC Davis school, office and art supply buyer Mary Testa, some of the new offerings will include an extended collection of notebooks, yarn, paper mâché letters, bike accessories, stickers and whiteboards. The art section will also provide pre-packaged kits of art supplies for students taking art classes on campus, based on what professors require for specific classes.

“We cater to the students first,” Testa said. “The art and design classes ask for supplies to be packed up, especially in the beginning classes.”

Additionally, the lower level will have a tech department for students to bring their Apple products for repair and diagnostic tests. This will differ from the already established TechHub on campus and give students an additional resource. The repair center will house state-of-the-art equipment, and students will be trained to work at the new center.

The renovation of the new bookstore was a two-year process, and required collaboration from several parties, according to Swafford.

“Otto construction, Design Construction Management, College Store Design, Campus Recreation Union facilities staff and students, student affairs marketing, UC Davis Strategic Communications, UC Davis facilities and the entire team of the UC Davis Stores students and staff have all played a critical role in the development and the future success of the store along with several other individuals and departments,” Swafford said.

Written by: LINDSAY FLOYD — campus@theaggie.org