By David R. Kazak

When President Clinton came to SIUC last month, he brought with him an entourage of press people who filmed, recorded and wrote down everything he said. But it was where he said it SIUC, that is that University Relations Director Jack Dyer says made Clinton’s trip worth its cost to the University.

The University shelled out nearly $70,000 for the Sept. 11 Clinton visit. Most of the cost went to the labor needed from the Physical Plant as well as the companies which built the stage the president spoke on, Dyer said.

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Other expenses included security and more than $2,600 in SIU baseball caps which were given to members of the president’s national press corps.

Dyer, who is in charge of all public relations for SIUC, said the caps were a wise investment.

I’m not going to get national press corp people at SIUC every day, he said. They not only wore the caps while they were here, but they continued to wear them when they left.

The exact cost $67,891.10 was a bargain, Dyer said, especially when put into the context of what coverage would have cost if the visit coverage had been commercially paid advertisement time.

We were on ABC’s Good Morning America for 30 seconds and Peter Jenning’s World News Tonight for 60 seconds, Dyer said. If we had paid for advertisements for the University during those time slots it would have cost us more than $90,000. And that’s just ABC. We were on CNN, NBC, as well as every major newspaper across the country.

Dyer said the original estimates for the Clinton visit were in the $60,000 range, but because of the uniqueness of the event, he said no one was really sure about what the final cost would have been.

SIUC was not the only party that had to foot a bill for the Clinton visit. Carbondale city manager Jeff Doherty said the visit cost the city around $4,500. He said the majority of this funded over-time wages for police who aided in security during the visit.

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