To attend every major event in St Andrews throughout the academic year, you would have to spend £1,000 on ticket prices alone. There are several balls, dinners, fashion shows, a fight night, “Oktoberfest”, and festivals; not to mention the weekly nights out hosted by music collectives at venues such as the Rule, Vic, or Union that students are able to attend. But unlike other universities, the prices of these events are much steeper. Sure, going clubbing in a major city may be more expensive, but the prices for some events in this town are extortionate for a far smaller payoff. A St Andrews student pays upwards of £50 for entry to Kinkell Byre and a tote bag with two cans of off-brand cider. The reasoning behind these insane prices has always been that the profits are going to charity, but rumor has it – and evidence shows – that the money does not always make it there.

Before delving into the details of how much money is truly being donated by these charities, I want to cover some rumors which I have heard circulating in this town that made me question where our money is truly going. St Andrews Charity Polo Tournament historically threw two events throughout the year: a polo match in the spring, and an event at the beginning of second semester, ‘Barn Bash’. A split happened several years ago between the two events when Polo, or rather a member of their committee, allegedly dropped the ball - drastically. Rumor has it a singular member lost £10,000 through mismanaging of the money, and Polo needed to be bailed out. It's unclear how the bailing out occurred, but following the debacle, no vendors were willing to work with them again and the polo tournament ceased to exist. St Andrews Charity Fashion Show is also rumored to have had a similar issue several years back. When the late Queen Elizabeth passed on the same weekend as Starfields, a popular festival, the committee was no longer able to host the event; this caused them to lose a lot of money, and rumour has it they had to be bailed out by the university. These stories show two things: first, these committees are trusted with a lot of money, and second, they shouldn’t be.

I am not here to question the ability of an undergraduate to handle tens of thousands of pounds, as I am unsure I would do any better. But what makes me furious is that some of these so-called philanthropic initiatives are not donating very much to charity at all. Any actual charity in Scotland is held under regulation and the amount donated and spent throughout the year can be verified on the OSCR charity regulator website. When I stumbled upon this website, I realized that some of these charitable organizations are not actually donating much to charity. Before diving in, two things should be noted: one, I did not find all of the university charity organizations on the OSCR site due to size; if an organization is not mentioned, this does not mean that they are not charitable. Two, all of the following statistics come from the aforementioned website.

Let us begin with DONT WALK. Their events always appear to be bold, with an even bolder price tag. Last year the show was invite only and the standard ticket reached £100. This ticket granted access to two drinks at the venue and champagne upon arrival. Their total income last year was £143,000 while their spending sat at around £140,000, leaving little to lean on this year. Despite the understandable hesitancy to purchase a ticket for that much money, it is comforting to know that £350,000 have been raised since 2001, and DONT WALK is meeting the OSCR criteria for a charity. I am not going to deem the ticket a good investment, but the committee is clearly pursuing charitable efforts truthfully.

Similar things can be said about charities such as Lumsden and Kate Kennedy Club. Last year, Lumsden raised £42,000 and spent £50,000, meaning there must’ve been some recuperation from within the club. Nonetheless, there is clearly no hoarding of said money - Lumsden has also raised and given £45,000 to charity in the past seven years as per their webpage. Kate Kennedy Club has raised less with an income last year of a little under £10,000 and an expenditure of about £5,000. They will be expected to have a bit more of a cushion for their events this year compared to Lumsden or DONT WALK, but they still do meet the requirements for a charity in Scotland. However, I will say that I was unable to find any information which shows how much money they have donated to charity, ever.

Finally, this leaves one of the biggest charities in St Andrews: FS, or the St Andrews Charity Fashion Show. When bringing up the receipts on OSCR, there is a large red banner that displays the sentence: This charity failed to provide all of the information on its finances by its annual submission deadline. With a timer of one year and two months, FS blatantly shows just how long they have failed to prove they are charitable. Available information from 2022 displays their income was a little under £190,000 and their expenditure was a little over £225,000, both enormous amounts of money. These receipts of finances, or rather lack thereof, not only prove how little we truly know about where our money is going, but also that there may be little truth to what these organizations tell us.

That being said, for every charitable organization in this town that is hosting over-priced events, there are other organizations that are simply making money off of other students, such as Fight Night. Weirdly enough, I respect the latter more. Going forward, these organizations need to be more transparent with how much they are donating so the price tag can be a little more justified. However, I know that no matter what I say, Starfields and FS will always sell out, probably because not many students attend these events in the hopes of supporting charity. While I am not campaigning for everyone to boycott said events, I do think we should push these organizations to do the bare minimum, which is at the very least, being honest.