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| The President |
On Friday, some of us* received an email, from the Office of the President, that informed us of “new processes for Campus Events.”†
They are preposterously demanding.
According to the new process,
In order to schedule … any campus activity, an IVC-Facilities Use Application Form must be completed and submitted to Facilities. … The form must be completed and submitted … at least 90 days in advance of the event. After submission of the form, the requestor must contact [Facilities] to discuss details, requirements, and answer questions. Facilities will then schedule a date for the requestor to attend a Facilities Use Work Group meeting held on the first and third Wednesday of each month.Plus:
The requestor may also be required to fill out additional forms and/or applications…. These forms ... are necessary to fully support your event. Failure to complete all forms in a timely manner may cause your event to not be scheduled or supported.
—I.e., if you don't fill out all the forms, NO SOUP FOR YOU.So let me get this straight. If I want to schedule, say, a department meeting somewhere on campus, according to the new “process,” I am obliged to
• Submit my request three months prior to the event.Wow. Three months. Attending a special meeting.
• Contact facilities to answer their questions.
• Attend a Facilities Use Work Group meeting (which is held on Wednesdays, quite possibly when I teach)
• (Likely) fill out additional forms and/or applications.
I guess there’ll be no more events on campus—except those of certain special people.
*A friend who is a department chair forwarded the email to me.
†The email also announced a new process for reserving the President's Conference Room.
35 comments:
Does this policy apply to student club events and activities? I don't get how w're supposed to do anything with this kind of policy - 90 days in advance? That's the majority of the semester. I tried to reserve a room last spring for an event this fall but couldn't do it that far in advance because the teaching schedule had been finalized...how is this supposed to work?
Sorry for the typos! I meant: "had yet to be finalized." Anyway, the policy is not practical. It also seems designed to create a institution where nothing really happens.
It appears that the "process" applies to everyone, not just faculty.
Only three months in advance? Why not make it the school year. Just put in your requests now for the events you have planned for next year. That will provide adequate time to meet with the appropriate committee(s) to discuss your event and why you need the room.
7:09 is on target and correct. With the staff/faculty meeting factor to decide the possibility of having even a small event...this timeline is unworkable. Student life and exciting opportunites spearheaded by engaged faculty and staff are going to diminish. How is this serving students? Three months might as well be a semester. I am very discouraged.
This process seems to be designed by people who don't teach or take classes. 90 days? So someone of note is coming to the nearby university in October or November and I just notice it now but want to see if I can lure the fella over here, just for an evening or afternoon, no biggie, just a room with chair - a classroom, already set-up - but OH NO. I can't. And then to make the "requestor" attend a Facilities Use Work Group meeting as a condition - !?! (held on Wednesdays no doubt during prime teaching hours). Jeez. I give up.
While not much happens on campus anyway, this new policy will certainly insure that even less does. Brilliant.
Red tape gone wild.
84 instructional days for Fall 2013; 82 for Spring '14.
I am sure that this new policy went through the usual channels during its development. You should have lodged your objections then.
It appears that many in the campus community were unaware that as of yesterday no new events may occur until December or for 90 days (at about finals time)
I am sure there is some kind of misunderstanding about the new policy and who and what it affects. Don't overreact so. Again, I am sure it was thought through carefully and all these concerns were addressed.
Dear Miss Reasonable, thank you for your tongue-in-cheek commentary, I am still laughing!!!!!
This has nothing to do with department meetings or any other day to day type meetings/events. It's about events like the Gala, Astounding Inventions,club day outside groups, or any other event that will use campus resources or require funding. this is a way to insure support and coverage as well as getting a handle on costly events. Especially when they are not well organized or fleshed out by the requestor. Maybe if you had to work these events in a support role you would see the value in advance planning and clear goals.
8:35's clarification makes more sense than the original email which had much broader implications: "all events on campus." There was no mention about scope, size or funding.
The email refers to "any campus activity" and to "events." It does not distinguish between activities or events.
Agreed. Original email stated any campus activity and 90 days. 8:59's clarification totally clears up confusion and is very helpful. Thank you. I hope word gets out.
Does anyone know if that fiasco at the PAC on campus today (it was an outside event) was scheduled 90 days in advance? If so they sure didn't tell anyone...kids were pissed off, late to class, nowhere to park. The cafeteria had a huge line out the door. What where they thinking????
Our students (actually everyone on campus) deserves better.
What WAS the event at the PAC? The parking was the worst I have ever seen it. Took me over 30 minutes to find a spot at midday. Yes we were told to arrive early last week (thanks for the warning!) but what about the multitudes of part-timers who do not have the same options? WHY does the pumpkin patch have to get set up SO early? THAT certainly impacted the parking situation. WHY do the vendors get to park in the staff lot? WHY do the workers on the bio building get to park in the staff lot? I was nearly late to class. Many of my students were. One emailed me to tell me that he had given up. Several parked across the street.
Stories about bad parking at the beginning of the semester are par for the course for college campuses - check the first issue of every college newspaper. Oops! IVC doesn't have a college newspaper! Anyway, but today at IVC was one for the record books. Does anyone do math around here? Can anyone count - number of sections, number of students, number of faculty, number of staff and administrators - then special event people? Then compare to the number of available parking spots? Pretty ugly today. Not funny at all.
Happy to see someone recognizes the critical dilemma that part-time faculty face when they arrive on campus to teach and find no parking. Yes, the warning was nice but useless for those who teach on one campus and must make a quick commute to IVC. We can't cut our classes short somewhere else because someone didn't do their job here and plan accordingly. This situation is so unprofessional - and so unnecessary. Plan accordingly. Value those who teach the students and allow them to do their jobs. Part-time faculty make up the majority of instructors here.
It is so cliche to complain about parking - but it's a very real problem. how about a little oversight, planning and leadership. Delay the pumpkin patch by another week - whatever $$$ lost would be more than made up by accommodating the needs of both students and staff.
Evidently students, faculty and staff were not a priority in comparison to the event. Whoever allowed this debacle to happen has no clue about what goes on at this campus. Hopefully, if anyone (GLENN???) is in charge they will never allow it to happen again. Schedule this stuff when thousands of students are not on campus!
Of course, the parking snafu is just a symptom of the larger problem: what about the budget? what about leadership? Planning for growth?
What was the event that caused such an impact? I couldn't find any announcement. Did they rent the PAC to some private party?
I believe that a group of insurance people gathered re Obamacare--an event somehow sponsored by, or otherwise associated with, the state chancellor's office. Evidently, these insurance people were advised where to park, etc., but didn't heed the advice or instruction. They'll return in two weeks. At today's senate meeting, VPI Justice was somewhat apologetic about the snafu, saying that they'll avoid such events in the early weeks of the semester in future.
So they are returning in a few weeks. No notice has been sent to the campus as yet. What are the plans to minimize the impact to students, faculty and staff?
Are they coming on a non-impacted (Friday or Saturday) school day? Why is it so hard for our leaders to figure out what actually happens on campus and how to plan for events like this to mitigate the impact.
So when parking services sent out this message last Friday, why didn't they mention the insurance convention? Did they not know?
"Beginning September 1, 2013, the overflow parking in the Goodwill Lot off Jeffrey Blvd may no longer be available due to a contract rental of the lot extending through the end of December. Please plan on allowing yourself plenty of time to locate parking on campus prior to the start of your first class of the day. The overflow lot behind the Athletic Fields will still be available."
I think it is GREAT that they sent that out (first time ever!) but come on. And why not delay the rental of that field until after the third week of classes? Even without the insurance convention, it's bad out there.
Yes, much bigger issues out there than parking (which, of course will eventually ease up though yes it was awful, especially combined with the heat and zealous over enforcement. Whatever happened to eh welcome to college grace period? Other colleges still have that. It sets a nice tone. the tone this week out there was not nice at all.): the budget and its magical numbers; hiring and its magical numbers. I hear 7 hires now school-wide. How discouraging. I'd like to know how much the college has grown in offering through the years versus how much we have grown with f/t hires. Anyone know?
Yes, what happened to last year's dire "fiscal emergency"? Can we take our concerns to the board about IVC's history of under-staffing and its effects on our programs and student completion? I think that might be a way to better publicize our needs and perhaps get some support from above.
It's nice to know the backstory of the situation on Wednesday. It would have been much better to have been told up front about it.
Couldn't they see what was going to happen? And if they couldn't, well, couldn't they address it better while it was happening? Make some accommodation? Send out a consoling announcement?
I swear this is the worse place to work regarding information about issues that really affect the workplace and students. We get blizzards of emails about events, big and small, and tons of self-aggrandizing emails about mostly dubious and occasionally impressive accomplishments but seldom do we get emails informing us about what we really have to deal with in order to do our jobs. And never do we get an "Oops we goofed up, sorry, we noticed you were suffering, thanks for dealing with what must have been a difficult day" email.
Communication here at IVC is all PR which lessens its usefulness and accuracy because its goal is to create, sustain and defend an image. Hence the self-congratulatory, triumphalist tone and the strategic omissions.
We discussed last year's fiscal emergency recently here: http://dissenttheblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/glenn-roquemore-omnishambles.html
The failure to acknowledge mistakes leads to even more distrust. Can't they see that?
The IVC Facebook page shows a couple student complaints about parking this week, including one student who simply stopped trying to find a space the other day. what is notable about the FB page is that no one respond to student complaints about parking even though they respond to other issues. There also wasn't an announcement posted for students to arrive early because of severe reduction of parking spaces. If you're going to have social media - use it.
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