During the past year, event planning and coordination have changed dramatically as we know it and see it happening on campus.

In the past, CCSU’s event planning and production ran mostly through the previous Event Management office and some through the Central Reservation Office (CRO).

Since President Dr. Zulma Toro’s arrival as President of our university, she has changed the system due to budgeting, revenue and complaints-coming mostly from faculty and clubs-putting an end to the way the system was running for over 20 years.

Over the summer of 2019, President Toro announced the new and “improved” model which put CRO in charge of booking all events along with almost all of production. However, the part overlooked was the production that has always come out of Event Management (EM) ran by Dr. Scott McKenna.

In years past, EM has employed over 30 students as well as 3 university assistants and 2 full-time employees. With the change, they now have approximately 10 students, 2 university assistants and 1 full-time member.

Kathy Poirier, Interim Director of the Student Center, has since taken over duties of event planning on campus, where she seems to be doing quite well. The full transition was performed during the first week of this fall’s semester.

One club president (he/she wishes to remain anonymous to keep from being blackballed), was refused an outdoor setup “because we didn’t tell them what we needed 3 weeks ahead of time.”

They then proceeded to share, “We never had a problem getting equipment when EM was in charge and we constantly told them days ahead of time.” As like any new system, kinks have to get resolved.

This article is not to bash either side of the table; however, as an invested member of this CCSU family, both sides are at fault. Both department’s students are suffering over the political turmoil of the change and is undoubtedly impacting student’s education.

During this transition I’ve talked to many students on both sides. Almost all say, “this is so dumb,” and “the old system wasn’t broken.”

My question to Dr. Toro and the event planning committee (the team given the task of fixing the issue) is, why have you still not asked the students who actually produce these events how they feel? For an administration that says they care for the student body, why were they not consulted on a larger scale?

Fix these issues.

In a place where students tend to be tight for money and don’t have another option as a place of employment, having to deal with the inconsistencies of this change is very difficult, especially when no one seems to have answers as to what is happening.

Students do your part and change our campus. Make it better and don’t accept anything less.

Until next week…