Jaminfrog

At SMU, we wanted to send out a year-end reminder to ask non-donors to make a gift before Dec. 31. We’ve tried the tear-jerker with the alma mater playing in the background and boring stuff like that before, so this time we were able to stretch the boundaries a little bit and speak to why people really give this time of year (besides the goodness of their hearts) — the tax deduction!

I never thought we’d see a day when I could work Britney Spears into a giving solicitation, but I had to jump at the chance while I could.

Check it out and let me know what you think! Everybody in our e-marketing department had a big hand in this — James played the part of Professor E.Z. Deduction, Katy designed it, Bill worked the Flash magic and Cavin helped pull it all together in the end. Oh yeah, and I supplied the fake professor accent using a little hand-held voice recorder.

I got some interesting tax advice from a fifth grader a few weeks back.

We had just completed a lesson about taxation without representation, in an activity where the kiddos were unfairly taxed pieces of candy based on silly things like what color shirt they wore that day. The lesson was intended to show why the colonists broke away from the British government and how unfair the British taxes were.

So when we asked the kids what they learned that day, a student (wise beyond his years?) replied:

“You should hide your money and your candy from the government!”

Now, no telling whether he had learned that concept from his parents…and we tried to steer him away from a life of tax evasion…but my recent experiences with tuition benefits suggest to me that the little man might be on to something.

An IRS rule states that any graduate tuition benefit over $5,250 in value per year that would qualify one for a new profession is taxable at the same rate as regular income. So, since SMU is generous enough to pay my tuition, I am taxed as though I receive about $17,000 additional income in the bank that I never actually see. SMU calculates up the taxes and deducts them from my paycheck over three pay periods each semester.

What that amounts to this semester is that in November, December and January, I take home about $1,000 less than I would in a normal month. Now, that may not seem like a big deal, but Addy needs her sweaters, after all.

I know I shouldn’t be complaining, since 95 percent of my fellow students are making far greater personal and financial sacrifices to make it through school. But something about this IRS rule seems screwy. Shouldn’t the government be encouraging people to take advantage of these benefits rather than taxing them for it? Isn’t the allowance of $5,250 a little unreasonable for those using these benefits at a private (more expensive) school like SMU? If they have to tax something, maybe the allowance should be a percentage of tuition rather than a flat rate.

Plus, it seems like the IRS is trying to have it both ways. I can’t claim the amount of tuition benefit as an educational expense on my tax return because one can only claim a credit on tuition paid out of one’s personal funds. But then they tax the tuition benefit as if it has been paid as part of my salary.

So it seems I can’t hide my money, my candy or my tuition benefit from the government. But I’d sure like to be in a position to help change this rule one day.

I never thought that the little Segway human transporter could be a chick magnet, but I was proven wrong today when I spotted an SMU police officer on our main quad, giving Segway rides to co-eds. The cop was surrounded by at least four girls, giving them pointers on how to drive the thing around the big fountain. Talk about a 21st-century way to pick up girls!

Some random observations on where I’ve been for more than a month…

Law school is back in session and I really like all my classes. At the last minute I dropped the Income Tax class I signed up for last spring and got the last open seat in Real Estate Transactions. I’ve heard from the folks in Income Tax that their class is all about accounting and formulas, so I’m glad I’ve postponed that experience for a while. (Hey, I was an ad-pr major, remember! I don’t do math.)

Work has been pretty busy and we’ve finished two big projects and a bunch of other little ones. SMU is in the quiet phase of a capital fundraising campaign that will officially kick off next year some time, and there’s no better way to be “quiet” about something than to build a big website with video, charts and graphs…so we did! That site was about a year in the making, but we ended up building most of it the day or two before it launched.  I’m proud we pulled it all together somehow. We also launched an online version of our alumni magazine, so if you ever want to read good stories about SMU, head over that way.

I learned the location of a school zone in our neighborhood last week when I got a speeding ticket. I had just dropped off some movies at our local Blockbuster when I turned from the side road onto Davis Street and merrily began driving away. Then I spotted the cop, who was simultaneously spotting me in a black convertible, going 38 in a 20. The big flashing school zone sign was about a block back the road before where I turned. Luckily there were no kids endangered, just a friendly Dallas County Constable with a radar gun who also observed that I have neglected to change my address on my license. $454 later, I have learned my lesson. I will never go back to that Blockbuster in the morning!

Other than that, I’ve just done a lot of reading for school, a lot of hanging out, a little traveling, and a lot of not posting anything to this site. I’ve got more stories to tell, so I’m picking up the whole blogging thing and will be back around here more frequently. Off to work now — but on the lookout for school zones.

Perhaps even more disturbing than the sight of the baby that Chelsea and I made online is the sight of us disco dancing. I have asked the gang I work with whether there’s some way we could make use of this magic of the Internets here at SMU. We’ve just gotta come up with a plot that would be as entertaining and as disturbing as the sight of me in pink spandex while staying true to the educational mission of the university.

I’m about to celebrate my two-year anniversary with SMU. I really love the people I get to work with, and I’m learning a lot about marketing, Web geekery, managing people, working with vendors, and navigating the higher education environment.

Today was a big milestone because we launched a new alumni section of our Web site. This project has been going on in some form for three whole years…in other words, a year before I became a pony. It’s had various stops and starts due to changes in staff, changes in direction, roadblocks put up by vendors — you know, the usual work stuff.

The blessing and the curse of working in online marketing is that the good projects are never really done — they just keep evolving. So we’ll get up tomorrow and keep making little changes. But it was a proud moment today when we actually flipped the switch.

Move over, dumpster diving: apparently the best new places to find completely usable yet unwanted stuff might be dorm rooms at the end of the spring semester, when students unable to fit their junk in their cars leave behind everything from Ramen Noodles to clothes to furniture. And to think I was afraid to leave anything behind for fear of being fined by my RA.

B is for Ben, B+ (which I got in Torts), and Bomb Squad (which made an appearance at SMU yesterday)!

I was supposed to be in a meeting in the Blanton Building at 2 p.m., but got a call beforehand that the building had been evacuated. Seemed that a staff member in the mailroom there opened an envelope with a powdery black substance inside. Some of the mysterious substance got inside a cut on the employee’s hand and started burning. They reported the incident, the building was evacuated, and a swarm of police officers and the bomb squad showed up.

Turns out it was some kind of cooking spice.

I told Chel about this and she recalled a time in her childhood when she wrote a letter to a friend. On the outside of the envelope, she wrote in big block letters, “YOU’RE THE BOMB,” which is one way to tell a person you think they’re cool.

Then, she took it a step further by scratching that out and writing, “NO, THIS LETTER IS THE BOMB!”

She dropped it in the mail and didn’t think anything more of it, until a couple of days later when the letter was returned in a ziploc bag after having been torn to shreds by the postal service. Included was a warning about possible criminal prosecution for using the “B” word on an envelope.

I guess some “B” words are better than others!

Update: I got the video fixed…so in case you didn’t get to see it, take a look!

SMU may be testing out the old tenet that all publicity is good publicity, with all the coverage we’ve gotten lately about supposed faculty discontent over the prospect of landing George W. Bush’s presidential library. But this publicity was taken to a new level yesterday with our appearance on The Colbert Report, one of my personal faves. Makes me proud to be a Mustang!

Merry Christmas! We got back from our little Christmas cruise to Cozumel tonight (I’ll post pictures tomorrow!) and found out that a lot happened while we were gone — we had big news at work, as SMU has been named the more-or-less finalist for the George W. Bush presidential library and seemingly will get the library if all goes well from here.

But perhaps even bigger news I found out about comes from across the Metroplex at my alma mater TCU, where a guy I was in student government with got busted for trying to hire somebody to hack into TCU’s computers and adjust his GPA in an effort to get into grad school. Poor schmuck. Pretty funny story though — thanks to Zu for sharing.