THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 18, 1995 TAG: 9509180058
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
An independent business school newspaper is being scrutinized in light of an audit that found editors treated themselves to extravagant parties and bought video games with publication revenues.
The Darden News has spent at least $20,794 - about 53 percent - of its revenue during the past two years on entertainment, according to a independent student audit this summer. That includes $2,000 in purchases of Game Boy video games and other gifts in one month in 1994 and a $3,000 bill for one party at a Charlottesville restaurant.
The spending practices apparently do not violate university policy but have angered some fellow students at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration.
``It's a state school that has some entity that's making a lot of money,'' said Jackie Jamsheed, who graduated from Darden in May. ``This money belongs to the Darden community.''
Jamsheed, 29, who now lives in Connecticut, last year wrote an open letter to Darden officials and students decrying the paper's spending practices. The letter prompted this summer's investigation by the school's student government, which found no official misconduct, according to Darden officials.
The newspaper receives no money from Darden but uses the school's name and logo free of charge.
The Darden News' current editor in chief, Hutch Carpenter, said end-of-year gifts and post-production parties for at least several years have been rewards for the work of the paper's 10-member staff and its frequent contributors.
``Any money we raise is a function of the amount of hard work we put in raising this money,'' said Carpenter, a 27-year-old MBA student from Virginia Beach. ``We do put a lot of work into putting this paper together.''
According to the independent audit by students this summer, the newspaper, which comes out about every three weeks, has taken in up to $20,000 in revenues per year. The money comes mainly from advertising purchased by corporate recruiters hoping to gain access to future Darden graduates.
The newspaper does not pay state or federal taxes. Barbara Millar, Darden's director of student affairs, said she believed the newspaper, like other student organizations, was nonprofit and tax exempt. But neither Millar nor Carpenter could say for certain.
A regional Internal Revenue Service spokesman said the newspaper had not registered as a nonprofit group, meaning it technically should be taxed.
``Any earnings they get are taxable, until they tell us they're not,'' said the spokesman, Sam Serio.
Carpenter said the paper now is looking into its status as a student group and researching ways it could give something back to the school.
But he also said student papers at other business schools operate in a similar manner. At the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Carpenter said, students are shareholders and get to keep profits - totaling thousands of dollars - at the end of the year.
He also said that the Darden News has room for anyone who wants to join, and that a free market makes room for any other group that wants to compete for advertisers.
``If someone has built a better mousetrap for attracting corporate recruiters, there's nothing stopping them,'' Carpenter said. by CNB