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.