[Coca] Fwd: Re: Halloween & agencies

[Rafferty Underhill Kenney]

----- Forwarded message from "Josiah S. Litant" <jlitant at hampshire.edu> -----
    Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:52:34 -0400
    From: "Josiah S. Litant" <jlitant at hampshire.edu>
Reply-To: "Josiah S. Litant" <jlitant at hampshire.edu>
 Subject: Re: Halloween & agencies
      To: "Rafferty U. Kenney" <ruk04 at hampshire.edu>

Hello Raff.

Here are the answers to your questions:

1. The tent between the living rooms is owned by the college, but we
have to pay the tent rental place to come and set it up, so the cost
will be similar to renting anyway, I suspect. In addition, I am
nervous about having events by the yurt (in the woods at night). This
would also incur an additional officer to work by the Yurt, which
would cost more money. My advice would be NOT to use the Yurt,
especially when there are already 3 other dance/music venues in use
that evening. Thoughts on this?

2. I have gotten VERY strong input from several people that yo
ushould not use Theatrix. If you can work with Limelight, I think you
might be better off.

3. We can talk more about protocol for ordering items after the event
is over, you make good points. We want to retain COCA's autonomy, but
I don't know if removing special programs from the ordering makes
sense. I suspect there is a middle ground we can find that will work
better for next year.

4. Re: searching bags. This is really at Public Safety's discretion.
I talked to Karen about it, and suggested that we might say that all
bags in the RCC will be searched, and other items may be searched at
entrance points at "Public Safety's discretion." This was only my
suggestion, I don't know what they will do with it. I recognize how
this makes people uncomfortable, but yet there is no way to let
people into the RCC without knowing what they are bringing in. PS
needs to have the ability to search items over the course of the
night as they deem necessary. Do you have any suggestions on how we
might make people feel more comfortable with this?

Josiah


------------------------------------------
Josiah S. Litant
Assistant to the Dean of Student Services
HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE
Amherst, MA 01002
phone (413) 559-6666
fax (413) 559-5663


On Oct 17, 2007, at 12:29 PM, Rafferty U. Kenney wrote:

Hi Josiah,
	There were a couple of things I was hoping you could answer.
Firstly, does
Hampshire College indeed own and operate the tent that has been emplaced
between the Dakin and Merrill House offices? I do not know the
details as to
storage, set-up, and use, but was wondering how that tent was being
utilized
for Halloween. If it is available, could we put it in front of the
Yurt and
have an additional dance area, albeit on a much larger scale? An idea
I’d had*
would be to have a play list of dance music compiled by COCA that
would be used
on Halloween, but the idea seemed infeasible and non-justifiable in
terms of the
expense incurred for the rental of tents and additional equipment for
the sole
purpose of a secondary play list. However, if we were to utilize the
Yurt for
that purpose, would it be possible to set up another dance tent near
the Yurt
by utilizing a tent that belongs to Hampshire College?
	Also, as of writing this, we have not yet finalized the equipment
rentals from
Theatrix. I called yesterday to consult with them, and they said that
I was the
third person to call from Hampshire College regarding Halloween. He
seemed to
indicate that at least one of the two previous calls was from Kelley,
and also
said that Bruce, the person in charge of these things, was out and would
perhaps be in tomorrow (Wednesday today). I was planning on calling
Theatrix to
fully ascertain what we need and what is needed of us as regards the
lighting
and sound for the RCC, Main Tent, and Library Gallery central areas,
and any
others. As before, this information should be complete and available
extremely
soon so that the orders can be processed. Andrew Hart from Media
Services has
been contacting us and advising against Theatrix, and offered several
alternative agencies instead. Thus, we will be exploring those options
throughout the day.
	The help given us by various other offices has been a Godsend, most
especially
Special Programs, the SDCL, and Student Affairs. In terms of co-
ordination,
this process has been helpful to all offices and groups that are
involved with
Halloween. However, one thing that may further streamline the
efficiency of the
process in the future would be for COCA to more autonomously handle
certain
aspects of the event. The rentals in particular seem to be a
component best
handled by COCA independently of other offices in order to maintain a
degree of
efficiency, which would thus free up the time and focus of other
offices and
groups when delegating tasks such as the handling of permits,
security, etc. We
were mostly hoping that there would be a way to minimize redundancy
of all
persons involved while coordinating with all offices as well.
	Another concern of ours had to do with the Amherst Police Department
and Public
Safety regarding the inspection of personal belongings. Is there any
way that we
could make this seem less “intrusive” to attendees? There were a
great deal of
complaints about that from last year in terms of feeling welcome to
the event
and in the RCC. Is there a way of communicating this concern to the
APD in
particular, but also Public Safety at large in terms helping people
to feel
comfortable? Let us know any thoughts or suggestions. Thanks,

-- 
Rafferty Kenney, co-chair
Committee on Community Activities
Hampshire College
P.O. box 0891
Amherst, MA 01002
(518) 928-7129





----- End forwarded message -----


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.hampshire.edu/pipermail/coca/attachments/20071018/c9e3757b/attachment.html>