Following the prohibition of alcohol at the annual Design School Halloween Bash, the Design Council has overcome another obstacle in the staging of its event. The Council contemplated the cancellation of the Bash due to lack of volunteers and support.
Before the “Emergency Bash Meeting” Monday night to discuss the new issue, Diana Fakhoury, president of the Design Council and a senior in art and design, e-mailed design students threatening that if 100 people didn’t show up to the meeting willing to help with the Bash, then it would be canceled.
“We actually were contemplating just canceling the Bash, not only because of alcohol, but because we have had a lot of low student involvement and forces against us,” Fakhoury said.
However, according to Fakhoury, the meeting had a good turn-out and the Bash will continue as planned.
“We had a really good showing, so we decided not to cancel it,” she said. “We had enough people to go forward with plans.”
Fakhoury thinks students were not volunteering and supporting the bash because of selfishness.
“I think students have gradually been getting more selfish and more concerned about their own needs and what they need to do,” she said. “The design students are really busy people, we all have a lot of work to do, and I think that the students just expect for the Bash to go on whether or not they [help], but when we threatened to cancel, people came out with some energy ready to be active.”
Now that there are enough volunteers and support for the event, the Council can continue planning.
“We are just behind on planning because we’ve been working to get alcohol,” Fakhoury said.
Organizers of the Bash have been challenging the University’s alcohol policy after a Jan. 24 revision that was implemented to protect students from potential danger, according to the regulation.
A petition organized by the Council proposed on Sept. 15 at the student organization fair stated, “We the students, petition the reservation of the College of Design’s Halloween Bash in the ancient tradition of festive rites complete with festive beverages. We maintain that it is the privilege of mature adults to act like mature adults both in sobriety and in gaiety.”??Becca Mayfield, a junior in graphic design, and Riley Bunn, a junior in environmental design in architecture, are the authors of the petition.
Three hundred names held the petition since the Council recently released it to Tom Stafford, vice chancellor for student affairs.
According to Fakhoury, although Stafford questioned specifics about the names on the petition, he was impressed by it.
“He was questioning a lot about how many of [the signers] are under 21 and how many are above, and also he was questioning how many were from the College of Design and how many weren’t,” she said. “He was impressed with it that it was well done, but at the same time he didn’t give it a lot of legitimacy.”
Fakhoury said the decision regarding the alcohol policy at the Bash is still inconclusive.
“I met with the dean and he was not as receptive as I thought he would be because I think he feels that the chancellor and vice chancellor are trying to put all the reliability on him,” she said.
Fakhoury said Stafford supported having alcohol if the organizers of the event make it more of a College of Design event — which it used to be in the past — rather than a big event that is open to the public.
As of now, the organizers plan to limit the number of tickets sold to non-College of Design students. According to Fakhoury, the number has not yet been determined, but it is probably going to be around 250 tickets for non-College of Design students.
After speaking to Stafford, the council took the proposal to the dean.
“[Stafford] said he’d talk to the chancellor and he said he’d accept our proposal if the dean was OK with it, and if the dean took the proposal to them,” she said. “But they didn’t expect the dean to be down with it basically.”
Fakhoury said the dean took it to the chancellor, but he didn’t seem to think that it would go through. The results of the challenge have yet to be determined.
“If we do have alcohol, we are not going to do what we’ve done in the past where we’ve had a [bring your own beer] policy,” Fakhoury said. “If we are allowed to have alcohol, then we are going to serve it instead because it’ll probably be easier. We’ll check IDs and people who are over 21 will have a bracelet, and we are also going to have to limit the number of beers people drink to where they have up to four drinks.”
The Halloween Bash is scheduled for Sat., Oct. 28 and the time is to be announced. Fakhoury said she is withholding the location of the event since they are trying to limit the size of the party, including people from outside the College of Design.
Although the Halloween Bash will still continue as planned and the organizers have gained student support, the alcohol issue has yet to be determined, but Fakhoury said she hopes that she will have an answer by Wednesday.
According to Fakhoury, lack of volunteers is more of an issue than lack of alcohol at the Halloween Bash.
“I think it is more of an issue because there is a core group of people and up until today, there was really just a handful of people trying to do everything and it was too much — we simply can not handle it all,” she said. “We couldn’t do it by ourselves, that’s why we had to rally up the students and I think that even if the alcohol thing doesn’t work out, we have people that are motivated enough to come whether or not they can drink.”
