Nine days before Jason Levy assumed his role as the director of the Student Center last October, the Office
of University Housing reserved room 217 in the Student Center to hold a housing lottery for sophomore students. The reservation, which was processed by former Assistant Director of reserverations and event services, Maritza Santiago, was later misplaced.
Unaware of the reservation, Student Center Operations continued scheduling events to be held by student organizations in room 217. But University Housing was assigned to exclusively use the room to facilitate the housing selection process, which began April 1 and concluded last Wednesday. During that period, University
Housing occupied the room and placed a padlock on the door nightly at 7 p.m. About 15 student groups had scheduled events in the room during this time, Levy said.
The mistake was not discovered until March 30. SCO immediately contacted the student groups to reschedule their events, Levy said. Most of the displaced student groups were provided with alternative venues with help from the Department of Scheduling
and Space Management, Levy said.
“Some were pretty frustrated and some were not,” Levy said. “But most were very flexible and understanding.”
SCO made another scheduling error, which forced the Temple Student Government Elections Commission to cancel the “Owl Potential” slate’s first open forum. The time slot and venue SCO reserved for the forum, which was April 4 in the Student Center atrium, was also given to the Temple University Anime Club.
The club’s event had originally been scheduled to be held at the Bell Tower. SCO moved the event to the Student Center atrium due to a new policy banning large, sound-oriented events in front of the Bell Tower because of its close proximity to Paley Library, Levy said.
TSG Elections Commissioner Seth Embry, who reserved the space with SCO, was not informed of the change until the day of the event. Since TSG only requested a table and SCO was not aware it was going to be a forum, Levy said TSG was still allowed to hold their event. But they would have had to share the atrium with the Anime club.
“It was unfortunate, but we try to make the most out of anything,” said Juan Galeano, TSG student body president-elect and current vice president of Student Affairs.
Eric Stephenson and Nadine Mompremier, who are also part of the Owl Potential slate, stayed in the atrium and spoke with a sizeable crowd of students and Anime club members.
“The way we looked at it, it wasn’t anybody’s fault,” Mompremier, a junior law and business major said. “I know how much [SCO cares] about students.”TSG scheduled two forums prior to the election and would have rescheduled the April 4 forum
had the afternoon of chatting with students and Temple University Anime Club members not turned out so well, Mompremier said.
Stephenson, TSG allocations chair and president of Gamma Phi Sigma Fraternity, Inc., had planned two events in room 217 for the fraternity’s founding week. He said he received an automated e-mail about the rescheduling a week before the events were scheduled to take place.
The week’s events were moved to a classroom
in the Tuttleman Learning Center.
“[SCO] apologized and said they really couldn’t do anything about it,” Stephenson said. “I understand it, but you really can’t help but [be] angry.”
The fraternity’s fliers and graphic media display board with the previous location printed on it were rendered useless, Stephenson said. Attendance at the organization’s
“Political Awareness in Latin America” event held last Tuesday was “kind of messed up,” he said.
The mix-ups were not what Levy envisioned when he came to Temple. “We are working to alleviate the issues surrounding the errors made by the SCO staff,” Levy said. “[We] believe that, with system and process improvement over the summer, the issues of the past few weeks will be a thing of the past.”
Nick Pipitone can be reached at nick.pipitone@temple.edu.
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