Marketing Guidelines framed for Gymkhana Sponsorship
In March this year, the Senate approved the proposal of procuring funds from external sources for all the entities of the Students’ Gymkhana. It is proposed that the following activities would be considered for funding: General Championship or Gymkhana Calendar events, new council events or initiatives (as per the discretion of the General Secretary), capital and infrastructure requirements of clubs and capital requirements of cells. This list is not fixed and maybe extended in course of time.
All the councils and cells will be allowed to reach out to potential sponsors independently or directly in the consultation with the Chief Marketing Manager (CMM), or the President. However, the Chief Marketing Executives (who is the General Secretary, in case of councils or the Overall Coordinator, for cells) will submit the final request for the approval of the CMM. In case the deal consists of CSR contracts, the CMM will coordinate with the heads of institute festivals to check for a clash of interests for a particular company or the third company. The proposal will finally be reviewed by the DoRA office.
Any council/cell which will avail the external sponsorships would be required to submit the branding report as per the proposal approved by the Director, to the company/third party mentioning how the clauses in the contract of the deal were fulfilled. This report would be verified by the CMM.
As of now, the festivals, Antaragni, Techkriti. Udghosh and events like E-Summit are allowed to continue under their independent marketing wings.
Image courtesy: Students’ Senate website
Inclusion of Academics in GC
The academics of a pool will now carry a 15% weightage of the total GC points. Although the exact structure of the breakup of points under academics is yet to be finalised, there have been discussions to include the number of students receiving academic excellence awards, the number of students in academic probation and those receiving warnings, the number of students going for international and national conferences, foreign research internships and the number of publications as parameters to be considered in academics, in addition to the the average CPI, which remains the status quo. The reason cited for proposing the above modifications was the fact that the average CPI was so redundant a factor that the difference was only observed in the fifth decimal place of the points tally and hence was ignorable.
The HECs were the principal opponents of the proposal in particular and the inclusion of academics in general. The senators opposed to the idea were of the opinion that academics must remain the prerogative of the institute administration and the Gymkhana could do without additional academic pressure on the students and the resulting curtailed participation in GC events. He also went on to say that such measures would be ineffective in resolving the problem of forced participation of freshers, as was the view of some in the senate.
On the other hand, the proponents of the proposal were confident that it will work towards the overall encouragement of academics in the institute, saying that given the impressive track record of the HECs in getting things done, this might be the most effective way to improve the institute’s academic state of affairs and should not be seen as an additional burden on the HECs. Some measures that were suggested be adopted by the HECs are pre-planning of events to avoid clashes with quizzes, limiting the number of night-outs required of freshers as well as suspending all activities on regular days rather than stretching late into the night.
Business Club to be merged with the Entrepreneurship Cell
Anvesh Jadon, General Secretary of Science and Technology Council raised this agenda with the primary arguments being the overlap of activities of Business Club (B-Club) with E-Cell and a constant decline in the B-Club’s activities, observed in the recent years.
Other reasons considered while accepting the proposal were the involvement of E-Cell with the IME department, the alignment of interests of the B-Club towards the competitions conducted by E-Cell, the activeness of Entrepreneurship and Business clubs of other colleges where they work in cohesion.
This year, the B-Club activities will be looked over by 3 core team members constituting of Head Marketing, Head Corporate Relations and one MBA student who will be from the core team. The following events have been planned for the coming year : case studies, stock trading and group discussion competitions in Takneek, workshops on performing case studies by IME faculty members, assisting SPO with GDs before the placement sessions, reinitiating summer projects offered by the club and associating the faculty of IME for the same.
Mayank Chauhan, Overall Coordinator E-Cell, was positive towards this development, “The initiatives and activities that were in the ambit of the erstwhile Business Club, could prove to be of great significance in giving an exposure of the non-core environment to the individual. Further, they could prove to be essential skill builders that could assist a future entrepreneur. After its restructuring into a wing of the Entrepreneurship Cell, we aim to revive the Business Club activities by providing a broader perspective through our corporate outreach and better campus reinforcement through the assistance of IME faculties and MBA student members of our team.”
Written by Akhilesh Tayade, Siraj Singh Sandhu and S. Nirmal Kumar
