C
ompetitors in York Entrepreneur Society’s Ten Pound Challenge are pocketing 90% of the money raised for a Haiti charity appeal for themselves, it has emerged.
One team taking part in the society’s ‘Ten Pound Challenge’ are using the humanitarian crisis to boost profits for a competition.
Numerous students have reported to Vision that the team have been selling raffle tickets around campus since Monday, claiming to be raising money for Haiti with no mention of the society.
One unsuspecting student who bought a ticket claimed she was shocked that students were using the tragedy for profit. Freya Wigzell, a third-year History of Art student said: “He was basically taking money in the name of charity, they were selling them as if all the profits were going to Haiti.”
It was only after enquiries were made to the team that it was revealed that the raffle was not just for Haiti but was part of the Ten Pound Challenge. They admitted that only 10p in every pound would be donated to Haiti – the other 90% going straight to the profits of the team.
Henry Coyle, President of York Entrepreneurs Society claimed he was aware some teams were running raffles and donating a proportion of their proceeds to charity, and that this was allowed,”as long as it’s made clear that only a percentage is going to the charity”. On learning of students concerns Colye said there would be a full investigation into the allegations and that penalties would be imposed if it was found a team had misled students.
The Ten Pound Challenge is the latest high-profile competition organised by the York Entrepreneurs Society. It will run from the 22nd until the 25th February, with seven teams of four that compete in challenges designed to test their skills in sales, marketing and trading.
Rubbish. So it appears that the challenge is to generate a profit from the original £10 provided? After which all proceeds (minus 10% going to charity) will be handed back to the Entrepreneurs society for use on subsidising enterprise courses, press and publicity etc – and the winning team decided.
Therefore it is the specific team that should be slammed, not the society. If the team does not clearly explain only 10% of the proceeds go to Haiti, they should be heavily penalised. In my opinion, if the society takes swift action against the team to mitigate the issue, they have done no wrong.
I think it is pretty clear from the article that it was only one team that was at fault and not a fault with the competition as a whole.
I’m in the competition and I think this is ridiculous, if it’s the team I think, they have got through to the next round by deceiving students. Why haven’t they been thrown off the competition already!
Well it seems to me there is a fine line between saying to people “We are running a raffle, you can win £50, tickets are a pound. Oh and 10% of our profits go to charity” and saying “We are doing a raffle to raise money for charity and you could win £50.”
Although I can see why Henry allowed it to go on, I can also see how the competitors might be tempted to leave out the 10% element when they were selling tickets, and if this happened then the team should be heavily penalised.
One of them came up to me and said, ‘Would you like to buy a raffle ticket? It’s one pound and you could win fifty.’
As I thought of a reason to decline he murmured to me, ‘It’s for Haiti,’ so I of course bought one. Never did he tell me that only 10p of my money would be going to the aid campaign. It’s absolutely disgusting.
Does anyone know if the team has been penalised or not?
I think if the reports are to be believed then it would look very bad on the society if this team were to win.
You have to wonder about people who are comfortable doing something like that. It’s absolutely disgusting.
Does anybody know the names of these people?
For Welfare reasons Vision cannot name those people who were members of the team concerned.
For this reason, Vision will edit or remove any comments that it deems to have named those involved.
The negativity on this page astounds me! Fake Henry Foy you should be ashamed of yourself – why would you write such horrible things, whatever your personal opinion of somebody, there is absolutely no need to go writing it all over the internet, were you brought up by wolves?!
It seems to me that things have got very out of hand and blown out of proportion, all because of people’s jealously and personal vendettas and it is ridiculous!
The York Entrepreneurs Challenge looks like it was a great challenge, kudos to the society. Money was raised for charity – why are people being so critical? It is all hearsay and people trying to be controversial that is making this a far bigger issue than it really is.
10% of profits is more than any other team donated!!
Outraged, I understand your point of view, however I feel there are a few points that people are right to be upset about.
The fact that people in the first place thought that it was right to use a natural disaster in which nearly a quater of a million people died, as a way to make PROFIT for a society, with the aim of trying to win themselves a cash prize, is morally questionable to say the least, even if they made clear to people that only 10% would be going to Haiti.
If we are to believe the allegations, then we have to accept one of two things, either a group of 4 intelligent University students, who had already been warned that they had to mention that only 10% of their money was going to Haiti, simply forgot to tell people this in the heat of trying to sell a ticket, or that they knew that if they didn’t mention the 10% element they would get more money.
The first instance suggests they are very forgetful and stupid and did not take the concerns of the organisers, who I agree organised a great competition and should not be blamed for this, seriously, of if the second instance is true then they intentionally deceived students. Only they will know which one is true.
For god’s sake Vision, at first I was shocked by this story, but the fact you’ve evidently blown this up just to seemingly have a pop at the former editor of your rival newspaper totally undermines it! If the team had broken the rules, they would have been kicked out of the competition, and you’re obviously just stringing this along, and also exploiting the Haiti connection, just to attack someone on your hit list. Grow up and try to behave like proper journalists, or at least intelligent human beings. It’s disgusting that you’re abusing the power of a YUSU-funded newspaper to exact your personal agenda, and that you’re allowed to get away with it. Disgraceful.
This has nothing to do with Vision and Nouse’s stupid rivalries. It’s ridiculous to even bring this up. The Entrepreneurs misled students who believed that their money was going to a good cause, and not to some unscrupulous ‘task’. This team should have been kicked off and the all the money they raised should go to Haiti, not just 10p of every pound.
Maybe it’s because I don’t know the full story here, but how have Vision blown this out of proportion? By saying they’re exploiting the Haiti connection you make it sound as if that actually had nothing to do with the story, which, again I can’t be certain as I don’t know the full story, it kind of seems to have a great deal to do with the story! And the story reports that there is an inverstigation underway so perhaps the team will be kicked out/penalised in the future.
Jim, usually I am the first to ridicule the sensationalist and tabloidy writing of Vision, as they have, in the past, exaggerated stories. In this instance though I feel they have reported the facts as objectively as is possible.
Also, if there is any connection between the team and Nouse, I feel Vision should be commended for not making any mention of it in the article. They cannot be held responsible for the comments posted on their article, as long as they break no welfare or legal rules. If somebody wants to pretend to be Henry Foy then until he comes forward to ask for the comment to be taken down then Vision have no right or responsibility to remove the post. For example, there are frequent posts pretending to be Roberto Powell on the Nouse website (where I usually get my fill of campus news) and these are permitted.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
Comment edited by moderator
Jim, I don’t think it’s particularly fair to blame Vision for blowing this story out of proportion. From what I can see, the person who wrote this article has behaved like a ‘proper journalist’ and an ‘intelligent human being.’ In fact, I think this is a very responsible piece of journalism, as people have a right to know where their money is being spent if they have been in any way mis-led. Given that the competition has only just taken place, I would hardly say that the paper is stringing this story along, and the only people that can be blamed for exploiting Haiti are the competitors within the offending team. As for vendettas, I think you’ll find that no names are mentioned within the article, or even hinted at. So you can’t really blame the paper for something that somebody has independently written in their comments.
“”If somebody wants to pretend to be Henry Foy then until he comes forward to ask for the comment to be taken down then Vision have no right or responsibility to remove the post.””
That’s simply not true. Media law states that publishing a comment on the site leaves Vision (and Nouse) open to the exact same libel laws as if it were a published article – the UK’s libel laws are stuck in the past and don’t differentiate between user-generated content and published content (like the US system does)
@Ex-York media hack, I imagine my knowledge of the media charter isn’t as good as your’s however I did say ‘as long as they break no welfare or legal rules’
As we don’t actually know it isn’t the person who put it then I don’t think it’s breaking any laws, that’s why I said ‘until he comes forward to ask for the comment to be taken down’. I should perhaps have been more precise and said that ‘until he comes forward to say it isn’t him’, then Vision have no actual knowledge it isn’t him.
David: That would make sense, but our libel laws (this has nothing to do with the media charter) means that Vision have to make a reasonable attempt at verifying the authenticity of the source (just as they would have to do in a news story) before publishing it – basically the “it only becomes libel once you’re informed it’s libel” gross simplification of the rule only applies if you make a reasonable attempt to verify it’s not libel first. Nouse do (or at least did) have procedures in place to make a reasonable attempt to verify comment origin before publishing them for exactly this reason.
It could be worse though, we could be in Italy.
Ex-York, well as the comment has been taken down I can only assume that you are correct, and I bow to your superior understanding of libel law.
It would be fair for both newspapers to try to verify the identitity of commenters in these kind of cases, but as I said I was basing my comments on the fact that ‘Roberto Powell’ and others are frequently commenting on the Nouse website and I am sure that, if as you say, Nouse were making an effort to contact him then these comments would be taken down pretty quickly. I fear that the procedures may have lapsed.
I think this is a great article, well done vision.
Front page this bad boy!