[4012] in APO News
BookEx Room Reservations
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sara C Pickett)
Tue Jul 20 15:05:53 1999
To: Oscar A Rodriquez <orod@MIT.EDU>
Cc: apo-news@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 20 Jul 1999 08:50:04 EDT."
<199907201250.IAA03668@w20-575-109>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 15:05:25 -0400
From: Sara C Pickett <sarac@MIT.EDU>
> Hola... what room do we have reserved for BookEx?
>
> -OROD
> BookEx PC
So, enough people have asked me about this, that I should just
send email to everyone, even though my notes are lost somewhere
at home, and things haven't been resolved yet (but all the more
reason to inform people, so that they can help).
The room reservations for BookEx are honestly rather screwed up.
It turns out that we hadn't yet made any reservations for Fall 99,
or Spring 00 (or any of the future ones, but we can't do those yet
anyway). I started working on this at the beginning of June, but
that was already probably to late. But, here's the deal:
For this fall (Sept 99), the entire student center is
completely and totally reserved by the R/O committee. There
were no other rooms of an appropriate size controlled by the
CAC available for that week. Kresge and several other
buildings that they thought might have appropriate rooms are
booked up with various theatrical rehersals and
performances. The CAC said that some of those might be
canceled, but there weren't any spots that looked likely to
work out. They seemed to think that the BookEx was just the
sort of thing that the R/O committee would want to support,
and that if we asked, they'd just give us West Lounge for
that week. I have the number of a contact person somewhere
in my room, but at this point I should go back to the CAC
and get it again. Emily said that she'd try to contact the
R/O committee for me (Thank you!)
For next spring (Feb 00), there are also problems. There were
already two reservations for West Lounge during that week. Hillel
was holding an even there on Friday evening (we'd have to be out
by 4pm, I think). Compared to the mess for Sept 99, this doesn't
seem so bad -- we'd have to clean up early or something. But the
bigger problem is that a Christian group has West Lounge reserved
on Wednesday night (6pm-10pm?). They *might* let us leave the books
there if we pushed them all up against one wall or something, but I
don't think that's too likely... The CAC checked, and there aren't
really any other rooms that they could be moved to on Wednesday
night, although if they were willing to switch nights sounded like
they could get a room somewhere. I have their contact info if someone
wants to try to negotiate with them.
Twenty Chimnies and all other vaguely appropriate rooms are booked
up even more than West Lounge, so we can't really move either. So
the real problem is what to do on Wednesday night. We could push
the books over to one side if the other group was okay with that,
although it would still be a pain. We could store them in the locked
hallway that connects the West Lounge and another hallway (bet you
always wondered what that "fire exit only" door was). Or, we could
move stuff out onto the balcony are for the evening, and a couple of
us could camp out there until the stuff could be moved back. The CAC
lady (she's really cool) suggested that the balcony was actually a
great place to sell books from in terms of visibility, but not so
good in terms of security. I don't know what the heck we want to do
(persuade everyone else to cancel their reservations for that room?)
but other people should offer suggestions.
I *did* reserve the West Lounge for the whole rest of the week, so
that we don't have to worry about new scheduling conflicts. I
also reserved that locked hallway for Wednesday night (who knew you
could reserve hallways?). And while I was at it, I reserved the
balcony for the whole week, in case we end up there Wed night, or the
Book Ex chair gets ambitious and decides to have us hawking things
from the balcony.
So, to recap, things are screwed up. For this fall, we need
to convince the R/O committee to give us the room, or we're
going to be selling books on the sidewalk (which can be reserved
through the CAC!). For next spring, we need to either move
everything out of and then back into the room on Wednesday night,
and leave early on Friday, or negotiate with the other two student
groups.
And I'm going to reserve the room for Fall 2000 just as soon as they
let me. Dealing with this mess took a solid two and half hours of
playing musical rooms, and made me late for work besides.
And the CAC scheduling lady is really cool, and says that we ought to
consider taking out a Tech ad for BookEx.
YiLFrustration&Scheduling
Sara
AVP
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Sara C. Pickett sarac@mit.edu
Cambridge, MA 02139 http://www.mit.edu/~sarac/home.html
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