Students of Yeshiva University have the opportunity to partake in numerous events each week. Though some of these events are geared towards the entire student body and visibly planned months in advance, most of the programming that takes place on an average night is run by individual clubs and caters to smaller more specific groups of students. Such events are advertised about a week or two in advance through fliers, school emails, and Facebook invites. Students who have never run a YU event may believe that organizing such programming is a fairly simple task; however the planning for even the least complicated of programs begins well before fellow students first learn about an upcoming event.
Three weeks before the desired date of a student program, a Yeshiva University Event Request form must be submitted. This form, which is easily accessible on the YU website, is then placed into a google doc. First a student council member goes over the event on the google doc and indicates his or her approval or recommended changes. Each member of the student council has a number of clubs they are a direct liaison for. The job of the liaisons is to constantly check in to make sure the clubs they are responsible for are active and then approve their clubs’ events on the google doc. Next the Office of Student Life must put through the event and send it along to facilities and various other services. Once these services also approve of the requests, the advertising for the desired event may begin.
Tami Adelson, program director for the Office of Student Life described how the process has evolved since she started working at YU. Originally students filled out paper forms when requesting an event. These hard copies would sometimes get lost, especially when events require working with multiple budgets and both campuses. Now that the form is online, the Office of Student Life on both the Beren and Wilf campuses, along with the various members of the student council, can all access the event information simultaneously and work as a united team.
Adelson also explained that the requirement to submit an event request form three weeks in advance is a change from previous years when only two weeks of advance notice were necessary. With the old system it would take about a week for an event to be processed. Then facilities would have another week to make sure rooms were available, that there was enough staff on campus for the multiple events going on each day and make all other arrangements that fall under their responsibility. However, this year facilities has requested more time for this process and the new three week policy was initiated to accommodate them. Adelson said that she has not received many complaints regarding this change in policy.
Furthermore, despite the three week policy, depending on the situation, the Office of Student Life can work with students to plan events far more quickly. Events such as thallium rallies and responses to terror attacks are often planned within hours. Similarly, if a club learns of a speaker coming in from Israel only two weeks in advance, as long as they then notify the Office of Student Life immediately, the event may be accommodated. She also added that one might not realize it, but there are union rules and many legal issues that come into play when running events and ample time is needed for everything to work smoothly. Adelson clarified that the goal of the Office of Student Life is not to complicate the process for students, but rather make is as easy as possible while ensuring that events are run efficiently.
Hudy Rosenberg, TAC treasurer, praised the Office of Student Life saying that “although there is a lot to do to make an event, the Office of Student Life has done an incredible job of streamlining the process. They have essentially created a checklist that any student can follow and map out in there head from start to finish when creating a program on campus.” She said that though students sometimes complain about the bureaucratic process, once she explains to them what goes on behind the scenes, they are usually very understanding.
However, some student leaders are unhappy with the system. Elisheva Rabinovitch, president of the Beren Campus Computer Science Society, finds that the online event request form to be very complicated to fill out. Additionally, her requests for food are often denied, and even when approved, she often doesn’t get what she requested. Other student leaders have echoed her experiences.
Rabinovitch also explained that she would prefer a system where instead of having to turn to the student council to fund each event, each club would be given a budget at the start of the semester to allocate as they saw fit. She added that such a system would demand more responsibility of club heads, and in response club heads would take their roles more seriously. She thinks that even if sometimes the money would not be used as wisely as possible, this sort of experimentation and suffering of the consequences is an important part of the learning that takes place throughout the college experience. Similarly, rather than work with facilities, which she finds to be extremely overpriced, she wishes she could arrange the food for events herself and then be reimbursed,.
Shoshona Klafter, president of the Beit Midrash Committee, said that she understands the system as trying to balance responsibility between students and the higher ups. However she finds that in reality, the only role of the students is to initiate an event, and then the Office of Student Life and facilities take care of everything. She believes that this causes the student leaders to be less enthusiastic in their planning of events. She added that if club heads were given more responsibility that may result in fewer events, but they would also be far better as club heads would be fully invested in them.