Alumni step in to help Reck parade

While the Ramblin’ Reck Parade, Freshman Cake Race and Mini 500 are among the long-standing homecoming traditions, the Ramblin’ Reck Club, the events’ sponsors, could not find anyone to foot the bill for this year’s events.

That is, until the Alumni Association stepped in with some $2,345 financial assistance to make the traditions possible. This, added with working with the GTPD to reduce costs, will allow the events to go on like normal.

Earlier this month, changes in GTPD policy regarding the funding of external events sent the club scrambling to acquire funding for security at the club-sponsored events.

Prior to the policy change, instituted this year by Police Chief Teresa Crocker, GTPD would provide security services to some Institute events at no cost.

“In the past, the previous chief allowed monies to be spent from police budget to pay for all these extra duty events for police officers and equipment,” Crocker said.

Under the new policy, however, the police department will not fund any security outside of its regular duties.

“The bottom line is that when I came in and looked at our budget and field positions.the money is not there to do all those [events], because it is a substantial amount of money when you take into consideration all the events that are worked each year,” Crocker said.

The police department offered to assist the group in obtaining the funds for the event. Crocker said she sent an email to the responsible member of the club offering “to go with you to SGA or Alumni Association or somewhere else to find this funding.”

In a document provided to the Technique by the police department, initial cost estimates for the security for the parade, cake race and Mini 500 were around $5,500.

This initial estimate included the costs of police personnel as well as crowd barricade rental and setup.

After viewing this estimate, the club and the police department negotiated new terms of agreement for security.

“As a group, we developed a plan that reduced the number of police officers utilized for the Mini 500 from 14 to seven, and for the Cake Races and Ramblin’ Reck Parade the number of police officers was reduced from 14 to seven,” said Captain Pat Wypasek.

The police also agreed to let the club find a less expensive service to rent and setup the barricades, saving the club $500, according to Davis.

With the revised figures, the total cost was cut nearly in half to $2,345 sans GTPD-provided barricades.

Yet, even the reduced cost of police services exceeded the financial resources of the club, who only has one outside sponsor this year, BP. Thus, the club sought out Institute resources to foot the bill.

“President [Wayne] Clough was contacted, and he referred us to Dr. Schafer, who referred us to the Alumni Association,” Davis said.

Ultimately, the Alumni Association provided the stop-gap funds to allow the event to continue this year.

“Within the last day or so,” David said, “it seems like [funding] was resolved,” she said.