Ole Miss Associated Student Body Vice President Emerson George counts votes during an ASB Senate meeting in Oxford, Miss., Tuesday, April 8, 2014. (Photo/Thomas Graning)
The Associated Student Body passed a resolution Tuesday establishing a monthly raffle to give students a chance to win extra Flex money.
Former Sen. Kate Aspinwall and Sen. Pearce Crosland presented the resolution, and the senate unanimously voted to approve it.
The resolution stated that $1 raffle tickets will be sold at the ASB-sponsored Let’s Talk Booth, located in the Student Union, with a drawing at the end of each month beginning in the fall.
The resolution also explains that the raffle winner will win $100 worth of Flex money. According to the resolution, ASB will give businesses, organizations and other groups the option to sponsor the money. If there are no sponsors, the money will come from the first $100 collected in the previous month’s raffle.
Crosland said he helped write the resolution after his constituents approached him about raising the amount of Flex dollars given to students.
“We had a bunch of other students ask if we could implement a bill that gave them more Flex,” Crosland said. “That would require a whole bunch of different things, so what we decided to do after talking to contractual services and Aramark was (to) sell tickets and raffle it off; that way they have the opportunity to get more Flex.”
The resolution also states that the money collected from the raffle will be given to the Ole Miss Food Bank.
Aspinwall said she and Crosland originally wrote the resolution to help students obtain more Flex money but knew they always wanted to donate the earnings to charity.
“We knew we kind of wanted to donate the money to some charity because we knew there would be proceeds, and we obviously didn’t want to just sit on that,” Aspinwall said. “We didn’t really know what charity we were going to give it to at first, but then we talked to the head of Aramark when we were discussing if this would be feasible, and he mentioned donating it to the Ole Miss Food Bank since Flex kind of has to do with food, and he’s really passionate about that; he thought that would be a really great charity and also benefits the Ole Miss students and community.”
Sen. Natalie Truong said she thinks that the raffle will also help the student body connect with the ASB.
“I think it will get (the students) more involved in what is going on on campus,” Truong said. “Right now, they don’t even stop by the table as much as we would like, so having them come by and buy a raffle ticket, we can talk to them and see their opinion and see what is going on.”
