Ceremony cost should be told

The Winthrop community has a right to know how much money was spent on last Friday’s dedication ceremony for the DiGiorgio Campus Center.

About 300 people were on campus to eat lunch provided by ARAMARK on Friday, Sept. 24.

Winthrop footed the bill with funds from the Winthrop Foundation, the university events fund and a fund designated for events related to the university’s 125th anniversary.

And, the campus center was closed to students for 24 hours in order to prepare for and host the event.

When The Johnsonian asked for the total amount spent on the event, a university official told us Winthrop does not divulge this information in order “to avoid comparisons between donors and honorees.”

The dedication ceremony is classified as a donor event, said Rebecca Masters, assistant to the president for public affairs.

The DiGiorgios did announce a generous estate gift of $200,000 on Friday.  Certainly that makes each a donor and an honoree, considering the building is named after the DiGiorgios.

That doesn’t change the fact, however, that the event was held in honor of a sitting president at a public university funded at least partially by state money.

Students, faculty and staff ought to be privileged to information related to spending at this university.

What is the harm in disclosing this type of information?

The Johnsonian thinks it was wrong in the first place to close the doors of the campus center to students from Thursday afternoon to Friday afternoon.  We would like for visitors to our campus to actually see the building being used by the Winthrop community instead of feel as if they are walking into a museum.

Now that the dedication ceremony is over and students weren’t invited anyway, The Johnsonian thinks the campus has a right to know how much money went toward the event.

No matter who the building is named after, this campus and all the bricks laid here belong to the community at large.