On Thursday, the Office of the Dean of Students’ Event Planning Office announced changes to the system through which CIOs reserve spaces on Grounds for various events and rehearsals. The Event Planning Office will carry out these changes through the CIO event space booking system, the SOURCE.
The changes, taking effect during the fall 2014 semester, will allow CIOs to begin reserving non-academic spaces online starting Tuesday, April 29 for use between August 26 and November 30. Groups will designate a member within their CIO to be an “Event Requestor,” who will be responsible for the submission of these requests on atUVA.
There are also new limitations on the number of events CIOs can host in popular locations. Newcomb Theater and Newcomb Ballroom will be capped at three reservations, combined, per CIO per semester. Organizations will also no longer be allowed to book Ern Commons for rehearsals on Thursday, Friday or Saturday.
Charles Rush, director of business services and operations for Newcomb Hall, said the new system will provide better management for event services.
“It is an event management system which provides the CIOs with a more robust way to submit and manage their events for the coming system,” Rush said. “They will also be able to track the status of their requests within the system.”
Rush said the inception of this new system came from student concerns about the time it took for the Event Planning Office to process their requests and the difficulty in managing pending requests under the old system.
“[The new system will] reduce the amount of back and forth in terms of communication between the CIOs and the event planning office,” Rush said. “Student groups can book immediately rather than waiting for a response or confirmation from the event planning office.”
Second-year College student Kyle West, Student Council’s vice president for organizations, said, in addition to the SOURCE, Student Council is working on new mechanisms to give students more input in the designation and usage of spaces on Grounds.
“We as a student body do not have a lot of input,” West said. “We are working to create a Space Committee to work with the SOURCE.”
West said the goal is to develop this committee during the summer so it can be in place by the fall.
“There is no liaison between the space reservation resource and something in the student body,” West said.
Associate Dean of Students Marsh Pattie said booking of these spaces ahead of time would ensure a more equitable distribution of use between the CIOs at the University.
“The changes were put in place to allow for a more fair distribution of usage of the [non-academic] spaces among a variety of CIOs,” Pattie said. “Given the rise in the number of CIOs, the amount of spaces remains the same.”
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