Wednesday, November 14, 2001

Administration cuts funding for holiday lights
By Sam Eaton
Staff Reporter

For the past two years, the lights on Sadler Hall have helped welcome in the holiday season, but budget cuts will leave the building dark this December.

Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Don Mills said the chancellor and vice chancellors decided to cut the spending for the Sadler Hall lighting last winter.

Order of Omega, a Greek philanthropy organization, coordinates the Holiday Tree Lighting, but has never paid to light Sadler Hall.

Mills said the decision to end the tree lighting was passed to Order of Omega last spring.

But Order of Omega president Sara Donaldson said she did not find out about the budget cut until it was too late to make other plans to light Sadler Hall.

“It was disappointing because we didn’t find out,” Donaldson said. “Our (public relations) person went to see if everything was in line, and that was in September.”

Donaldson said she felt TCU was regressing the short-lived tradition of lighting Sadler Hall.

“Anything at TCU has, over time, improved itself,” Donaldson said. “It seems like we’re backtracking.”

Mills said both disruption to people in Sadler Hall and the cost of the lighting factored into the decision.

“We were spending a lot of money and using TCU staff, plus we had to rent a lot of equipment,” Mills said. “We were spending in the neighborhood of $20,000. For people who had class in this building or work in this building, it was very disruptive. It was nice, but not worth the cost of disruption.”

Director of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs Tom Sullivan said Order of Omega does not have the money to pay for the lights by themselves.

“They have a one-time initiation fee that goes mostly to the headquarters for Order of Omega,” Sullivan said. “They’re not a group that has a lot of money.”

The Order of Omega approached the Student Government Association and the university three years ago with the idea of putting up lights around Sadler Hall, Sullivan said.

“The first year they did it, SGA helped pay for a considerable part of that,” Sullivan said. The university’s budget paid for all the lighting last year, he said.

The Holiday Tree will still be lit in front of Sadler Hall, as it has been for the past 20 years.

Order of Omega and Bank One will collect donated gifts to give to less fortunate children, Donaldson said.

Students, faculty and staff can pick up gift cards in the Student Center, and the gifts will be collected at the tree lighting Nov. 28, Donaldson said.

Donaldson said the lights are not what has made the event important.

“The main objective of the entire tree lighting is to allow those children to receive gifts,” she said. “In order to get people there and get people excited about it, we had created this night filled with lighting the whole building.”

Mills said the university needs a less expensive way to celebrate the holidays.

“It’s awfully expensive for two weeks of lights,” Mills said. “We need to look at how we can do the celebration and be a part of the community in a way that’s a bit more economically responsible.”

Sam Eaton
s.m.eaton@student.tcu.edu