Students will lose a lot more than discounts to movies and home football games, if Auxiliary Services Benefits stickers are not purchased to go with their identification cards, Harold Tyler, director of student development, said.
The $10 sticker, which provides discounts honored at local businesses, school events and amusement parks, has not been generating enough income for the Auxiliary Services Board budget as it used to. This is creating a potential budget shortfall next year that could affect numerous student programs on and off campus.
“We’re trying to get more students to buy the sticker; that would solve all of our problems. If everybody participated and bought the sticker to support student programs, we would have it made,” Tyler, who serves on the Auxiliary Services Board, said.
“We would get a surplus again; as a matter of fact, we’d pay all of the bills and build a surplus again,” he said.
The sticker is the second-largest source of income for the ASB, which funds the student government, the Union, athletics, fine arts, Project Success, Early Start and the Honors Transfer Program, among others.
Last year, only one-eighth of the student population bought the sticker–this was about 6,800 students out of more than 25,000, Tyler said.
ASB project supervisor Lawrence Moreno was hired in late summer to spearhead a marketing campaign to get more students to buy the sticker, which includes advertisement banners and signs, a new discount booklet with more business discounts and free giveaways and raffles.
The last raffle was two weeks ago after about a month of signing people up and advertising. The next raffle will be either the end of April or beginning of May. Students may sign up for the raffle in the student activities center at the ID photo counter.
“Actually, not that many students take part, which is kind of disappointing,” Moreno said. “I think the most important thing for the students to know is that (the sticker) is for the students and it’s an investment that you’re not putting into your education, but toward the college itself.”
The raffle was not disappointing, however, for students who won the raffle. The first-place winner got two free Disneyland tickets and the second-place winner got two Knott’s Berry Farm tickets.
“I never thought that I could actually win the raffle, but now that I won, I think it’s cool,” David Carranza said. “I would recommend it if they go to the movies often.”
Tyler, Moreno and other campus leaders are hoping that promotions like the raffle Carranza participated in will have helped increase sales of the stickers.
The results arrive around mid-July, when the final accounting for the semester is wrapped up.
The sticker may be bought at the Cashier’s Office, where booklets on discounts are also available.
“We’ve made the effort and I haven’t seen the figures yet,” Tyler said. “That’s the big question: Did it make the difference?”
