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07 March 2003
uwRyan.com This website is meant to provide value to UW student by delivering information. It shares its name with the column that I write for Imprint. Please provide feedback on what I write as well as give me suggestions of topics to cover. You can send e-mail to me to ryan[at]uwryan[dot]com.
uwstudent.org
Federation of Students 
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Liquor licence lawsuit confusion
Most students should have heard by now about the multi-million dollar lawsuit the Feds have launched against the university, whether it be from uwstudent.org, overhearing conversations in class, or the worldwide co-op e-mail information network. Given the posturing, rhetoric and ignorant commentators, making sense of it all is getting difficult. I'll try to clear some things up from what I have found out. Why $11 million? Feds' lawyer Jerry Levitan said when assessing damages in a lawsuit experts and forensic accountants determine an appropriate number. He later admitted that they had not hired such an expert. He emphasized that he had suggested a higher number and that the Feds executive preferred a more conservative $11 million, which doesn't make it reasonable, given that his figure could have been even further past left field. Feds VP administration and finance Chris Di Lullo gave some figures that don't add up. He said that Bomber and Fed Hall normally get $2 million in revenue per year, but that doesn't account for the expenses. Are they going to also sue their employees for costing them all that money? This year's budget projects a profit of $75,000 for each bar for a total of $150,000. Maybe a fraction of that would be a better number since the bars have only been closed a month and a half. Di Lullo also points at the money students have contributed to construct Fed Hall, which is $1.5 million in 1984 dollars paid over 20 years. He also points out that students are being denied their rightful use of the facility. Asking for all that money back would suggest that Fed Hall was never opened (it was) or that it will never open again (it will). It is an arbitrary number that is probably set to grab attention. It is possible that whatever number they said in the lawsuit would determine how big the number in all the headlines would be. Where is the money going to come from for all this? If damages are awarded, who will pay for them? This question was asked at the forum and answered by Lino Demasi on uwstudent.org. The students will end up footing the bill. They already spend money on Feds fees, tuition and the various businesses around campus. It will be student money that will pay the legal fees of the administration. Feds said that retained earnings, not student money, are paying for the lawsuit. Student fees are a significant part of Feds' revenue. How can Feds justify that no student fees from prior years contributed to those retained earnings? Even if those funds are accumulated from business profits they should be paid back to the student fee side for years when student fees were propping up the money-losing businesses. What's up with contracting out? Liquor licence regulations state, "The holder of a licence to sell liquor shall not contract out the sale and service of liquor." So it is clear that contracting out is against regulation, but it is not as clear that the UW-Feds relationship is contracting out. AGCO spokesman Ab Campion said they still have to look at the contracts. He said, "The university has a lawyer, the students have a lawyer and we have our own legal department that is also involved in this. If you want to get three lawyers together, they each have their own particular interpretation of the facts and incidents that are going on." It would cost big bucks to see this case all the way through the courts. So Feds are probably starting this with the intent of settling, but it takes more than two to tangoo, or something like that. |