The USC third-party donor collective, Student Body Right, is not an extenion of the athletic department. The collective has in fact unsettled the athletic department and some insiders at the school. This entity is not on the same page as university administrators. Let’s be clear about that.
However, USC fans are loving what Student Body Right is bringing to the table. Let’s be very clear about what’s going on here: Student Body Right is not here to think small or play an incremental game. This is Los Angeles Dodger baseball, taking big swings and trying to hit home runs. It only makes sense on a larger level: If the group is doing things in a way the university isn’t entirely comfortable with, it naturally follows that Student Body Right wants to make a seismic impact as opposed to tinkering around the edges.
The group told Ryan Kartje of the Los Angeles Times about its larger overall plans:
Dale Rech, a co-founder of Student Body Right, confirmed to The Times that the new collective intends to convert the previously shuttered alumni clubs into individual chapters of the collective, each of which would operate independently under the umbrella of Student Body Right.
With that fundraising network in place, the collective’s proposed goal is to raise enough for every player on the USC football team to be paid $50,000 per year, according to a presentation viewed by The Times.
More details from Kartje on the Trojan clubs Student Body Right is trying to bring back:
Relaunching the Trojan clubs is likely to dredge up past resentment of its own from USC alumni. Many expressed their discontent in June 2020 when, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the university’s alumni association announced it was changing the structure of the longstanding regional alumni clubs.
At the time, leaders from 70 of the clubs penned a letter to USC President Carol Folt decrying that USC’s alumni association “grossly underestimated the breadth and intensity of alumni opposition to dissolving the regional alumni groups.”
Now Student Body Right is hoping they’ll channel that intensity into another endeavor, one that operates without university oversight.
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