The Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering recognizes the importance of entertainment, and providing alcohol at certain events, to help advance certain missions of the school. These missions include employee retention, donor development, advancing Luddy's reputation with external constituents, attracting the best employers for Luddy students, and recruiting the best faculty and staff. This guideline was created to provide direction to faculty and staff on what the school administration feels is reasonable with respect to the use of entertainment and alcohol at events. This guideline is subordinate to all IU policies regarding entertainment and alcohol. As such, if a conflict arises between this guideline and an IU policy, the IU policy must be followed.
Defining reasonableness
IU uses the term "reasonable" to guide decisions regarding entertainment. IU is a public university, not a private institution, or a corporation, and so levels of reasonableness may appear more modest to faculty and staff who are accustomed to non-public employers. In addition to respecting IU’s public institution status, consideration also needs to be given to the funding source of alcohol purchases.
The school administration often uses two tests to help think through reasonableness. The first test is the "newspaper test". Since IU is a public institution, IU is subject to the Open Records Statutes of the State of Indiana. As such it should always be assumed that everything the school does could be open to scrutiny by the public, often via newspaper requests for information.
The second test is the "donor test". How comfortable would the school be if a donor was presented with an accounting of what their funds were used for. Donors are allowed to request this information.
Based on these tests the school administration has created the following guidelines.
Events where alcohol may be provided
Events where alcohol might be available include, but are not limited to:
• Meals with donors
• Meals with prospective faculty and graduate students
• Meals with staff interviewees
• Official school and department/division receptions
• Luddy conference/workshop receptions
• Alumni receptions
• Retirement receptions
• Employer receptions
Events where alcohol is not allowed include any event where undergraduate students may be present.
Guidelines
The school has set a guideline of $75 per head, which should include food, alcohol, tax and tip. IU has a guideline that normally only three employees will entertain a guest.
The IU guideline also allows spouses to attend if the guest’s spouse is in attendance. Generally, children of employees should not be in attendance at business dinners. However, the school understands that sometimes the unexpected may happen (like childcare arrangements falling through at the last minute) and in these situations children may be in attendance. Children’s meal costs cannot be paid for by IU.
There are occasions when there are good reasons to go beyond the guideline above. This may include entertaining major gift donors, and other VIPs. In these instances, employees should seek prior approval for going beyond these guidelines. For faculty, approval should be sought from the chair or other executive academic leader. For staff employees, approval should be sought from the Director of Finance.
Quantity and cost of alcohol
Generally, providing guests and employees with one or two alcoholic beverages is considered reasonable. The purchase of expensive alcoholic drinks is generally not considered a reasonable expenditure of IU or IU Foundation funds. All alcohol costs must be included within the per-head guideline amount indicated above.