Warning to BU students…Story of how six COM students (including me) got screwed

Dear members of the Daily Free Press, and the Boston University community.

I’m writing this letter to warn you of the dangers of the “real world” – a world that recently altered the lives of six past and present BU students.

In March of 2003, I, along with approximately 40 other students in COM Professor Joyce Macario’s Design in Communication class had a new and exciting assignment: To design a logo for a real company. Savoyant, a high end home-networking start-up, promised students in two different sections of Macario’s class that the top three design groups would receive $5000 for first place, $2500 for second place, and $1500 for third place. Additionally, CEO Andrew Rollert said the first place logo would be Savoyant’s official logo, becoming a nationally recognized symbol. With these prizes as compensation and motivation for the additional course workload, 40 students worked for two months on various logo designs, hoping to meet Savoyant’s “professional” standards.

When the contest ended on April 30, Rollert announced three winning design groups – six winners including myself. After the initial thrill of winning ended, Rollert’s promise that our money would come in a few weeks became a constant tease as months passed. My partner and I, as the second place winners, as well as the third place winner, had no contact with Rollert over this period of time. In fact, it was not until we each contacted professor Macario in July that we found out that Rollert lied when he told us the “check was in the mail,” in May. Though professor Macario informed us loosely of Rollert’s roundabout claims, we remained hopeful that our check would still come-until recently.

Frustrated with the lack of results for their work after many months, the first place group contacted the runners-up a few weeks ago. The team informed us that not only did Rollert promise to use their logo, but also that he would employ them as his new marketing team. As Rollert promised dream jobs with benefits, he called weekly meetings with them to discuss business and brag about the expensive company motorcycle he purchased as a “perk.” As the summer went on, Rollert became increasingly elusive about when the final prize money would come, and when the team would start their new jobs. Claiming now that he was unsatisfied with the winning logo, Rollert requested revisions post-contest, even though a two-week period in April was set aside for such changes. Rollert refused to award the money until the group made his desired revisions. Each time the group asked about us, the second and third prizes winners, Rollert shrugged off the inquiries, telling them not to worry about it. Well into August, the first prize winners worked on the logo as if they were freelancers, though they received no compensation. Their promised jobs as Savoyant’s marketing team became a joke as Rollert’s contact with them became less and less frequent.

All six winners have since united on this issue, and found that SaVoyant is not registered with the Better Business Bureau. Furthermore, we have yet to find any proof that Savoyant is a reliable company. Now, we are looking for legal solutions to Rollert’s failure to award the winnings. However, despite that we have written documentation of Rollert’s agreement, taking action will not be easy. After a respectable pursuit of Rollert from COM’s Assistant Dean, COM has washed its hands of this incident – chalking it up as a taste of the “real world.” Also, a recent attempt to gain sympathy from Chancellor Silber failed when COM told him that the first place winners never revised the logo-a completely false statement.

Perhaps most frustrating for the runners-up in this situation is that our prizes should have nothing to do with whether or not the first place group revised their logo (which they did time and again). Rollert’s promise to us was nothing more than the compensation for second and third place. Yet COM still told us to treat Rollert like a bad client, and forget further pursuit of our prizes.

As a BU alum, I offer my fellow Boston University students a warning: If your professors approach you with “real world” clients that seem too good to be true, they probably are. Just because a Professor organizes a “real world” assignment does not mean she or he has checked out the legitimacy of the sponsoring company. I suggest that if any of you come across a similar classroom situation, you research the company on your own before doing one minute’s worth of work.

This was not COM’s Adlab, which has a legitimate means of collecting fees from its clients. This contest was a mandatory assignment that took more time and energy than the assignment it replaced. I understand the importance of merging the “real world” with college experiences. However, I cannot comprehend how something that started as a class project, promising much more than course credit, can simply be written off as a bad business deal when it failed. We were not a business or even freelancers – we were students. We invested our time and talent into a project that excited us as designers and motivated us as struggling students. Now as recent graduates and current students we simply feel bitter about the “real world,” and its harsh realities.

Thanks for your time,

Lindsey Burton COM ’03 grad

lindseyanne77@hotmail.com 617-851-1456