On April 29, an impromptu meeting in Strong Hall set off a chain reaction of confusion, change and outrage.

As registered student organization All Campus Events, affectionately called ACE, prepared to hold its third and final event of the year, they received an obscure message from their advisor, Brad Ward.

“Hi ACE,” the message read. “I hope you are doing well. We need to have an impromptu meeting tonight if at all possible. … Sorry to sound super cryptic, we’ve just had a couple of significant things come down from above that we need to discuss. It is important to be there if you can.”

According to ACE members,  ACE and certain members of the Center for Student Engagement met that night. By the end of the meeting, ACE had disbanded from the center, thus losing the majority of their funds. The future of UT’s Homecoming, which features many ACE-led events, was up in the air. Students were left with far more questions than answers.

“Every single person was blindsided,” ACE President Kylie Burke said.

A legacy of tradition

According to members, ACE is one of the longest-standing student organizations on campus, having been around since the early 1900s. Historically, it has run three major UT traditions: Homecoming, Carnicus and All Sing. Participation in these events gives student organizations eligibility to win the ACE Cup, a culmination of hard work and school spirit.

According to Vollink, ACE’s mission is to “provide fun, safe and inclusive events to foster the competitive and fun loving spirits of our participants and keep some of the most longstanding UT traditions alive and prosperous.”

At the core of ACE’s existence is tradition, and it’s been this way for a long time, according to Burke.

“We market ourselves as being a traditions-based organization because those three events are the three longest standing on campus,” Burke said. “And we have always prided ourselves on that. It’s very much a privilege to be a part of.”

Planning and executing such large events takes money, and Burke said ACE has typically raised funds independently, mainly through percentage nights and alumni donations. Student organizations were also paid registration fees to participate in the three key events.

Joining forces with CSE

Since 2022, ACE members claim the center as well as the university began working to get more involved with ACE’s Homecoming responsibilities, beginning by telling ACE not to charge registration fees.

The center helped fund Homecoming in 2022, 2023 and 2024, according to ACE members.

As time went on, the center “required strings attached, including changing the verbiage for how ACE leads Homecoming events,” according to Jacob Maples, ACE director for Homecoming 2023.

Maples said he “saw the writing on the wall” with the center and “tried to fend them off” during his time running ACE.

Burke said that when the center approached ACE, it promised additional funding and wider marketing for ACE events across campus. When 2024 Homecoming came around, the center worked even more closely with ACE.

“A lot of things were taken care of for us,” Burke said. “We had this giant hot dog eating competition. … That event was super expensive, but a lot of things that we couldn’t really do on our own got taken care of for us (because we had joined the center).”

They said some of the center’s changes seemed more like growing pains.

“We weren’t allowed to put our name on things,” Burke said.

Because it was now partially funded through the center, ACE said they had to take a back seat when it came to receiving credit for the event, and were now required to use the phrase “Hosted by the Center for Student Engagement with assistance from ACE” instead.

This came as a surprise, ACE members say, because they hadn’t been informed of these requirements before joining the center.

“(It was) kind of BS because all they did was help with the funding and if you know anything about Homecoming, I probably put in close to 150-200 hours of work for that,” Burke said.

Burke said more changes were announced by the center when it came to marketing.

ACE has its own public relations chair, a student responsible for assisting with publicity, running social media accounts and designing graphics for sponsored events. With the center’s involvement, however, ACE says it was no longer allowed to have creative control over Homecoming. Graphics, colors and social media fell under the direction of the center.

“Anything that we posted on our own personal Instagram had to get approved by the university,” Burke said.

She explained that their color scheme became limited to orange, gray and white, and the PR team couldn’t create their own graphics.

“All we kept being told was that Homecoming is too big,” Burke said. “‘It’s too big for you guys to handle.’ Even though we had done that for the past 100 years without their assistance, without a problem.”

“I’ve been a high-level decision maker in six ACE events, and (the model that the center proposes) is not gonna work,” Maples said. “The model that we had, while imperfect and still has struggles that we were constantly improving, it worked. It worked well, and it kept the aspect that I think people love so much about ACE — and that’s the fact that it’s student-led.”

The center’s attitude appeared to extend only to Homecoming, because when All Sing rolled around in February 2025, the restrictions were lifted, according to ACE.

“We did all of our work on our own for that one,” Burke said.

At a crossroads

Initially unconcerned when she received Ward’s message to the ACE team in April, Burke felt unprepared for the drama that subsequently unfolded.

According to Burke, the center presented ACE with two options in that meeting.

The first option: Combine with the Campus Events Board and become an entirely new organization called the Student Programming Team. Within this deal, they could still keep leadership of Homecoming, All Sing and Carnicus, but they would have to plan these events alongside the members of the former Campus Events Board. The organization ACE, as it currently stood, would no longer exist.

The other option: Secede from the center entirely, losing all funding attained through the partnership. They would remain ACE, but they would also lose the yearslong tradition of planning and executing Homecoming.

Burke said ACE did not have any prior warning of this ultimatum, and that she posed the question, “Why does the center just get to take Homecoming?”

“They don’t really give me an answer other than, ‘You guys can’t handle it.’ They just say it’s too big of a thing across campus,” Burke said.

State funding laws

The ultimatum ACE faced did not happen in a vacuum.

Maples recalls that during the center’s interactions with ACE for Homecoming, UT officials told him that it would not be ACE’s event because of “some state law that they were always very unclear about.”

The center’s cited reasons for this sudden change in Homecoming leadership were attributed back to the policies adopted as a result of 2019 Sex Week, according to ACE members.

The Tennessee Comptroller released a report on UT’s annual Sex Week, a student-organized program that had long drawn scrutiny from lawmakers. In response, the university adopted a policy change: Student activity fees that support events like Sex Week could no longer be automatically allocated. Registered student organizations were no longer eligible to receive Student Policies and Services Fees, a semestral fee that students pay in order to access certain services and programs throughout the year.

The shift had lasting ripple effects. Student organizations across campus now operate under tighter oversight, and funding streams once considered reliable can be reshaped or withdrawn by administrative decision. That means groups with historical autonomy — like ACE — are now subject to greater scrutiny and control when it comes to how their events are funded and branded.

“(CSE) basically said that we were not allowed to say that we had ownership of the event,” Maples said.

An uncertain future

Where does Homecoming stand now?

According to a statement from UT spokeswoman Kerry Gardner, Homecoming is a collaborative event between students, athletics and alumni.

However, student contributions through organizations like ACE have historically made up a large portion of UT’s biggest fall event.

ACE has traditionally created and controlled eight events that contribute toward competition over the ACE Cup, according to Burke. That list includes Chalk Ped Walkway, Smokey’s Howl, the banner drop from Neyland Stadium, parade floats, lawn displays, Tower of Cans, a rotating sporting event and Rocky Top Dog.

“We 100% understand that we are not the ‘entirety’ of Homecoming, but we are a very great part that affects many student orgs, especially considering Greek life organizations,” Burke said.

ACE’s decision to keep their organization alive and leave the center also meant they had to give up control over any Homecoming events.

ACE members told The Daily Beacon that the center had promised to honor ACE’s two homecoming chairs for the 2025 school year, because those elections had already taken place before the meeting in May.

The Beacon reached out to the center and UT for more information regarding the chair-honoring process. The center has declined to further elaborate on a reason for this change.

A public records request to the university sought emails and memorandum with the phrases “ACE,” “All Campus Events,” “Homecoming,” “Homecoming funding,” “Homecoming budget,” “Homecoming sponsorship” and “student fees” sent or received between April 15 and May 13, 2025 to and from administrative personnel, including Frank Cuevas, vice chancellor for the Division of Student Life, Brad Ward, Nick DeGuzeman, CSE assistant director, Ashleigh Moyer, CSE director, and Dianna Foulke, CSE associate director. The only email received was an unrelated email to Frank Cuevas about the American Center for Education.

The Beacon also reached out to Cuevas and Ward for comment, but was referred to Gardner in each case. The Beacon also reached out to Ashleigh Moyer and did not receive a reply.

The Beacon received this information from Gardner:

“Financial cuts were not made to student organizations. The Division of Student Life distributes funds to division departments, and departments may choose to collaborate with student groups in alignment with the Student Programs & Services fee policy.

“Registered student organizations (RSOs) may continue to operate independently like other RSOs on campus. Programming boards may also continue as registered student organizations (RSOs) if they choose to do so.

“ACE is a registered student organization and operates independently of the university, just like other RSOs. Additionally, ACE and other RSOs are not eligible to receive SPSF funds per the Student Programs and Services Fee policy. This policy reflects the state law enacted in 2017.

“Homecoming is an administrative program led and funded by Alumni, Athletics and Student Life. Interested students and student organizations may assist in the execution of specific events. If there’s confusion, those individuals should connect with the Division of Student Life for clarification.”

A past ACE director who wishes to remain anonymous spoke to the Beacon about their experiences with ACE in light of its relationship with the center. According to them, the center ultimately wanted to make ACE’s events more accessible to all students, mainly by eliminating registration fees, and their offers to help ACE with funding were brought about by that desire.

“I think the intent was honorable,” the past director said. “However … it was really hard to protect the integrity of an organization that had been around so long when these options are just kind of, like, thrust upon you, and you go from being completely student-led to now, almost being given an ultimatum, and it’s tricky.”

Maples said he believed that the center had been planning a takeover of Homecoming for quite some time.

“We got sold down the river,” Maples said. “Our conversations always came from a place (of) they wanted to be helpful. They wanted to be a resource for ACE. … I can guarantee you while this happened for ACE in an instant in terms of how it changed, this has been coming down the pipeline for a while, and they have been stringing us along, and as soon as we give them that one step in the door, they’ve taken advantage of that, and then able to, you know, move us around to the point where we’re at.

“CSE itself was always working an agenda, and we’re seeing their agenda play out right now. This was not a spur of the moment decision. This was a decision that was calculated and well thought out,” Maples added.

Sophie Mehta, a member of ACE, said that even though ACE members are helping with Homecoming this year, they will not be doing so as an organization, but rather as individual volunteers. Mehta also said there is a lot of uncertainty within the general ACE body as to what is truly going on.

“I just think it’s not really even supposed to be known that we’re helping with (Homecoming) this year at all,” the member said.

Maples does not have high hopes for Homecomings which do not include ACE.

“It will be a disaster, simply because they (the center) do not have the operational knowledge, and the ability to operationally execute what it takes for Homecoming,” Maples said. “There are very few people that know how to do it, and it’s ACE that knows how to do it.”