Event planning process streamlined

Author: Brian Fung

The College's two largest programming boards will unite this spring in an effort to promote student participation in campus programming and to streamline coordination, according to Doug Adams, director of the Center for Campus Activities and Leadership. Planned changes will consolidate the work of the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB) and the Inter-Commons Council (ICC), and could be finalized as early as the end of March.

Members of both MCAB and ICC came together in a meeting on March 3 to discuss the prospect of joining forces.

"[We wanted] to see if there were ways to make the programming more intuitive, to centralize the system," said Adams.

Under the new arrangement now being negotiated, MCAB and ICC representatives will serve together on three general programming boards responsible for organizing social functions, large concerts and speaker visits. The exact number of subcommittees operating within those three groups has yet to be confirmed, but MCAB President Colleen Sullivan '07 said she expects many existing committees to assume additional responsibilities.

"The Concert committee will receive more money to allow for three smaller concerts of Grace Potter size, as well as two larger ones," said Sullivan. "The current Grille committee of MCAB will likely expand to take responsibility for the Gamut Room to hold coffee houses and musical events there, as well as the Freeman space or Coltrane Lounge."

The joint MCAB-ICC committee could begin operating by the end of spring break, according to Adams. The committee will have the authority to act on requests for programming from the student body and to dispense funds with oversight from the Student Government Association (SGA) Finance Committee. According to Finance Committee Chair Amanda Goodwin '07.5, the restructuring effort will keep the student body better informed about campus events, and help streamline cash flow.

"When you look at the aggregate amount that's allocated to concerts, that's a big number," said Goodwin in an interview last Saturday. "But because it's in these separated accounts that service different organizations like MCAB and WRMC, we thought that it would be more efficient to consolidate funding."

According to Goodwin, the basic framework under consideration will involve three separate pools of money overseen by MCAB-ICC. Each fund's contents will be available to the appropriate subcommittees responsible for programming speaker visits, concerts and large social events, and will be supported by money drawn from student organization budgets as well as a planned increase in the College's Student Activities Fee.

"At the end of the day, more money means more events," said ICC Chair Kylie Taylor '07.

The plan for programming reform on campus comes as the Finance Committee begins work on the budget for next fall. A recent upsurge in high-profile events has also contributed to the reevaluation initiative. A lecture delivered by Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts last October, a performance by alternative-rock group Guster scheduled for April and a commencement address by former U.S. President Bill Clinton planned for late May have caused groups such as MCAB, WRMC 91.1 FM and the ICC to collaborate as never before.

In previous years, programming was decentralized, with each student group appealing independently to the Finance Committee for funding. The lack of communication among various programming groups led to some weekends being heavily overbooked, but leaving virtually nothing planned for others, according to Goodwin.

"Last weekend, for instance, you had the energy symposium, you had a major speaker on campus and you had social house parties," said Goodwin. "This weekend there's nothing. Everyone mentioned that as a prime example of needing to space out events."

According to Goodwin, such scheduling overlaps will be amended with the changes put forth by the Finance Committee and the Social Life Task Force. Moreover, planners anticipate that the plan, which is designed to encourage student feedback and contributions, will bring variety to campus programming.

"Guster's great, but we don't want to bring Guster every week," said Adams. "It'd be interesting to look into doing rock. Or maybe country, blues or jazz againÖ I mean, there are lots of genres that we can hit. And the ability of this new structure is that there's more input from a cross-section of the campus."

Though the changes being considered by ICC and MCAB promise to be sweeping, Taylor said that the day-to-day operations of student groups will remain unaffected. Instead, collaboration between ICC and MCAB will mean better communication with the rest of the student body, leading to increased student participation in the programming process.

"Hopefully that will organically bring diversity to events," said Taylor. "It'll make programming more open on campus so that a regular student will feel okay about going up to anyone on the Board and saying, 'Hey, I want this speaker to come.'"

MCAB and ICC will continue to meet regularly in the coming weeks, hashing out details in preparation for a formal announcement of the new arrangement on March 18.