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Submission: Event planning procedures for student groups require streamlining

By Sina Famenini

March 4, 2015 12:15 a.m.

Registered student organizations at UCLA are endowed with a number of privileges that allow students to meet like-minded individuals who share similar passions and interests. Registered student organizations have access to various funding sources, free and low-cost on-campus venues, and experienced and devoted faculty advisers. But when planning an event, students are not only responsible for planning the contents of the event, they are also responsible for navigating the complicated and confusing procedures associated with venue reservations and logistics.

Although UCLA provides venues and facilities to student organizations, making reservations for such locations can prove difficult and unnecessarily tedious. For instance, Associated Students UCLA, UCLA Events Office, the Student Activities Center and UCLA Recreation facilities all have separate protocols and regulations established for handling reservations. Moreover, venue reservations through the same office often follow inconsistent and separate procedures. For example, while reserving a tabling space on Bruin Plaza can be completed through the OrgSync system, similar requests for the Court of Sciences must be arranged through email correspondence. With either method, signatories of student organizations find themselves waiting days and sometimes weeks to obtain confirmations.

For outdoors events or those that involve serving food, reserving the venue is only the first step. To ensure the safety of the participants, student leaders must next obtain a number of permits from the UCLA Office of Environmental Health and Safety, including temporary use fire permits. While the EH&S officer holds convenient and regularly scheduled office hours in Kerckhoff Hall, meetings with the fire marshal can take weeks to schedule through email. As a result, student organizations are expected to devote many extra hours to navigating the event-planning bureaucracy. The administrative red tape is especially discouraging to small or newly formed student groups whose members may not have much experience with these procedures.

Although student groups should consider the health and safety of our community as the top priority when planning events, the decentralized nature of multiple reservation systems coupled with slow communication practices creates unnecessary obstacles and confusion. These obstacles prevent student organizations from reaching their maximum potential.

Students as well as administrators will benefit from a more streamlined approach to event planning. Efficiency can be achieved through a central office that handles reservations, logistics and event permits. Furthermore, more departments should utilize the online OrgSync platform to accept and process reservation requests. Similar to EH&S, the fire marshals should also hold regularly scheduled office hours for student groups seeking to obtain the necessary permits. Lastly, improvements in the methods of communication will ultimately enhance UCLA students’ extracurricular experience.

Famenini is a fourth-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student, volunteer director on the executive board of the USAC Student Wellness Commission and president of the Mortar Board honor society at UCLA.

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