Friday, March 1, 2013

AASA utilizes alternative meeting location


Classroom reservation policies and students adjusting to the new semester has led to compromised meeting times for student organizations.

During the first two weeks, student organizations are not permitted to reserve any classrooms, aside from the rooms in the Oklahoma Memorial Student Union and the Jim Thorpe Multicultural Center, Breck Turkington, the director of enrollment services and academic records said.

The Classroom Management department leaves this block so that classes that need to accommodate students with disabilities, need more space or need specific equipment can easily change classrooms without worrying about an organization occupying the space, Turkington said.

“By the time we get all the [room] requests into queue and work everything, it might be the third week before it all gets finalized,” Turkington said. “Our real goal is to let [students] know in the second week so [they] can start to [plan] for the third week.”

Organizations such as the Asian American Student Association began reserving rooms in the fall for the Jim Thorpe Multicultural Center, a building which permits reservations within the first two weeks of the semester, to prevent meeting conflicts said Oliver Li, the AASA president and an economics and industrial engineering senior.

Despite their early planning, they ended up changing their first meeting from January 17 to January 24.

 “Since everyone was just coming back to school we decided to change it to [the 24],” Li said.

With about a hundred members to keep up with, Li said that they relayed the changed date through the group’s Facebook, twitter and email.

In addition, Li said they try to remind their busy members about meetings and events by creating a Facebook event page where they can join the group and actively receive updates about the event.

AASA will be hosting its first meeting on Thursday, January 24 at 6 p.m. in the Jim Thorpe Multicultural Center.