Grassa Gramma, one of the Louisville restaurants owned by WKU alum Kevin Grangier, is donating $796.46 to the Student Publications Legacy Fund as a result of 147 Student Pubs alumni and friends dining there or ordering take-out on Sunday night.
And that’s not the half of it.
Here’s the rest of the story (and a bit of a buried lede): As of this afternoon, this one fundraiser has netted $2,342.92 for Student Pubs, with donations from alumni and friends on top of the 10% donation by the restaurant.
A sincere thank you to everyone who turned out for the event, and to Julie and Mike Hinson, Margo and Lee Grace, and Caroline and Robert Pieroni for their generosity associated with this event and their support of the Student Publications Legacy Fund.
This whole event has been a real shot in the arm that will directly and indirectly help our students on the College Heights Herald, the Talisman, Student Publications Advertising and Cherry Creative. It comes during a year when we faced substantial cuts to our university-supplied budgets and a second sweeping of money we were holding in reserve in the Herald’s revenue-dependent account.
Your generosity from Sunday evening comes on top of more than $25,000 that alumni and friends have donated or pledged in the last few months to the Student Publications Legacy Fund, a protected account in the College Heights Foundation that we can use for immediate needs where our regular budgets are now falling short.
These donations, taken together, are helping us preserve a couple of our valuable fellowships for Summer 2025 that otherwise would’ve been cut. It will help us cover expenses such as paying students for their work, covering the ever-higher insurance premiums we face, paying for the software we use and other essential expenses that go beyond what our traditional budgets will now cover.
Aside from the money donated by alumni and friends, our advertising team is doing outstanding work, led by manager Keelin Davis and advised by Avari Stamps. Knowing the challenges we face, they set an ambitious $87,500 revenue goal for the fall semester and, as of Friday, were 75% to that goal with time still remaining to sell our Homecoming Herald, our popular Grad Guide for the fall semester and A Table for Y’all, our biennial Dining Guide we produce with the Visit BGKY.
A big question mark on our revenue is whether Student Pubs will be subjected to a 10% “overhead charge” — or tax, as one regent described it — that the administration has said it intends to impose on revenue-dependent accounts. (This would apply only to revenue we generate through ad sales and events, not to money donated to our accounts in the College Heights Foundation.)
Regardless, your generosity has put us in a much better position to have our students continue their strong journalism — both as watchdogs on the university and as mirrors reflecting life on the Hill.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.