I tried to take a stand against free work but only got fellow designers mad at me. How do I convince people we can't work for free? Or was I in the wrong?

(I'm going to have to be vague on the details for privacy reasons, or change some details).

I'm a design student and we've been taught over and over again that you shouldn't do work for free because it devalues the labor of all designers. I now believe this very strongly myself. There's a private facebook group of my classmates and some recently graduated alumni.

A famous person in the business field has become involved with my university recently and an alumni who works full time doing design for our school posted to the fb group with an "opportunity". This celebrity will be doing a series of speeches and the alumni wants us to design the brand for these speeches and the stage materials. In return, we would be considered for an internship with the celebrity's organization within the university. I wrote an extremely polite objection. None of my fellow students publicly agreed with me, and I definitely didn't change the alumni's mind. Today, he posted again asking if anyone was interested. (It seems no one had contacted him?) A second alumni posted to our group about what an amazing opportunity it was and how doing work for free would benefit our careers.

So this is where I screwed up: I made a post speaking against the whole thing and how I thought it wasn't an opportunity at all. A few of my fellow students then did respond- to disagree with me. They seem to be offended that I "spoke for them" and that I'm trying to convince them against volunteering for charity. (This celebrity's organization is part of our university, and neither are charities, though they are not-for-profit). I am dying on the "don't do work for free" hill alone. I'm not sure if anyone agrees with me in private because I haven't asked.

At this point it seems I've damaged my reputation within my own class and with the alumni, and I'm not sure if I should ever stand my ground when this comes up again or if I'm asked about it. I think there have to be at least a few people who agreed with me, but they're not speaking out because maybe those alumni could someday help them get a job. I guess the real impasse here is a lot of my classmates genuinely believe that our university and this celebrity should be able to ask for free work.

Now what?

Great design resource

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) Submitted August 03, 2017 at 08:13PM by theshadowofdoubt http://ift.tt/2uofdy5