By: Emily Langness
9/16/2004

After the costs of tuition, housing, and books, the potential for nights on the town looks dismal for most college students these days.   This year, however, Friends University students have an edge they did not have before. 

Now, any day of the week, Friends students can purchase any large, one-topping, carry-out pizza from the downtown Papa John’s for just $5.99.   Those who enjoy bowling can get free shoe rental at Countryside Lanes and pay just $2 per person for a game.   If it happens to be a Tuesday night, the Old Town Warren Theatre will sell movie tickets to Friends students for just $5.   That is a lot of entertainment for a lot less than the regular $20 or more that fun seekers are accustomed to shelling out.

The list of discounts goes on thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Director of Adult Student Services, Gary Rapp, and Friends senior Richard Empson.   They gave this discount program its wings in late spring of 2004, and it has the potential to grow far beyond the nine organizations now offering student discounts to Friends traditional undergraduate and adult students.

Empson is a Spanish major with minors in management and marketing.   He works in Adult Student Services and is involved in student government as Chairman of the Student Concerns Committee and Senior Class Senator.   With these connections, Empson was made aware of a desire on campus for more communication between SGA and the student body, and decided these discounts could play a part in bridging the gap for both adult and traditional students.

At the end of the spring 2004 semester, Rapp and Empson were discussing the few discounts available to Friends students at the time, and Rapp expressed a wish for more.   Empson seized the challenge by responding, “Why don’t we just do it?”

During the subsequent months, he contacted between twenty and thirty companies, resulting in the current list of nine official student discounts available at various businesses around Wichita.  

“I wanted students who pay to go to school here to get rewarded somehow,” Empson said.

The first step in obtaining these discounts was to contact a company and find out how receptive it was to giving student discounts. 

“I got everything,” said Empson.   “With some companies, I would just walk in the door, and they would say ‘no,’ but others were more unselfish.”

With a list of willing institutions, the next step was to propose a possible plan and wait for them to make an offer.   Once the offer was verified in print, the discounts were posted on the Adult Student Services web page.   What began on the web page can now be found on brochures in every main building on campus.
To redeem any of the discounts, traditional undergraduates need simply to present their student ID, and adult students can show any other form of identification.

Empson hopes to contact more companies so that by the end of the fall 2004 semester, the number of participating businesses will grow to as many as fifty.   Looking further into the future, he hopes the program will branch out into SGA and possibly form a Student Discount Committee, involving more students in the project.  

 “It’ll be interesting to see where it goes after I move on,” contemplates Empson, with graduation coming up in May.   “For now, the more people who know about the discounts available to them, the better.”