[5580] in APO Printshop
Re: Letterpress Printing - anne's jobs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Cat Thu Nguyen Huu)
Mon Feb 2 02:35:22 2009
Cc: apo-printshop@MIT.EDU, apo-presidenet@MIT.EDU
From: Cat Thu Nguyen Huu <catthu@MIT.EDU>
To: "Leonard H Tower Jr." <tower@alum.MIT.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.64L.0902020025130.28597@mass-toolpike.mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 02:34:49 -0500
Hi Len,
Thank you for your email. I have to disagree with your opinion that
service to a private individual is not service. For example, is it
true that volunteering for a homeless shelter is called service, while
helping a random homeless person is not? Although this is not a really
good analogy because the degree of impact (of helping a homeless
person and printing some invitations) is obviously different, the two
for-individual things in each had the same degree of similarity to
their respective things that are considered service (helping a group
of homeless people at the shelter to helping a homeless person, and
printing invitations for non-profit organizations to printing
invitations for individuals). I can say much much more than this, but
I'll stop here because I have no intention for this to become a
discussion on how to define service, and neither do I want to convince
anyone to change their opinion on this.
I agree, however, that this _might_ not be the kind of service the
Chapter wants to provide. And although I said what I said in the
previous paragraph, it in fact had not occurred to me to consider the
nature of the job and how it matches our principles; so thank you for
reminding me about that. Nevertheless, after considering it I still
think there's nothing wrong with printing Anne's invitations. That
said, I was not aware of the Chapter's tax-exemption status, and I'm
not knowledgeable enough to say whether this does have some effects or
what we should do; so I'd like to hear someone else's opinions.
I wasn't free before 4pm on Saturday, and when I came to the office
afterwards you and other people there at that time did not seem to
need more assistance. I'm really sorry if I misinterpreted the
situation. Thank you for doing all this - I know the recent week has
been a rush and all.
Cat
On Feb 2, 2009, at 12:47 AM, Leonard H Tower Jr. wrote:
> hi cat (and apo-printshop and apo-president)
>
> i realized going home saturday night, that there was a second reason
> why i did not wish to be involved with anne's wedding invitations
>
> it was one of the press shop items i had hoped to talked with you
> about after the chapter meeting, but you wanted to help with book ex
> setup, and said you preferred e-mail
>
> the first, which i have talked a little about via email, is that
> wedding invitations are not good jobs for training or qualifying runs
>
> the second is that AX shouldn't serve for-profit businesses or private
> individuals (even members of the mit community)
>
> i won't do either using AX facilities
> i wish my service to benefit non-profits and the work they do
>
> doing jobs for private individuals and for-profit businesses also
> violates the 501(c)3 tax-exempt status AX has both from MIT and
> National (it's more complicated than that, but it isn't worth the
> paperwork, even if MIT was willing to let us submit information for
> their 990A filing, and i expect it wouldn't pass the IRS regs in most
> cases)
>
> other press ops may feel differently about that, but i won't do
> anything further for anne's job, or jobs like it
>
> we have enough jobs about that can be used for training and
> qualifying. in fact, matt just gave me another that is perfect for a
> training run
>
> i'm sure that anne is a fine person, but that isn't what's important
> here
>
> there is more i will email about all the above in some days or next
> week, as well as the other half dozen or so open topics, but other
> parts of my life need attention
>
> i was ill the first week of iap, and quite ill the third week, and
> just did many days of service for ax this, the fourth week of iap:
> helped with the APOffice reorg, helped decker with her training run,
> did the typesetting for the reg day card over several days, helped
> kristen run the job over almost 10 hours on saturday, etc.
>
> thanx
>
> yiLFS -len
