Friday, may 19, 2017
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Reservations filled well ahead of Final Exercises Many businesses say graduation weekend is among busiest times of the year Daniel Hoerauf | Senior Writer Although Final Exercises for the Class of 2017 have yet to begin, many graduates began planning for graduation weekend with their family almost a year ago. Many local hotels open for reservations very shortly after the previous year’s reservation. For some Charlottesville area hotels, their open reservations do not last long beyond the previous year’s graduation. Bill Chapman, general manager of the Oakhurst Inn, said they open reservations for the next year the Monday after graduation and are usually completely booked by the end of that day. “We have a waiting list before [that Monday] — because people are calling us constantly — we just add them to a list of names and we call them all back on the Monday after graduation,” Chapman said. “There’s a lot of voicemails, missed calls and what not back and forth, but it all goes down in a day.” While not all hotels may be booked so quickly, many still begin to receive reservations around the same time. “As soon as [the Omni Hotel] opens for reservations people start booking for [graduation weekend],” Megan Dowling, manager at the
Omni Hotel, said. “Maybe January or February is when we’re starting to get really full.” Some families may have also run into issues with the recent fire in the Excel Inn and Suites, however, the owners of Excel Inn and Suites have helped people who booked their rooms for Final Exercises find accommodations at other hotels. “Luckily Excel was pretty accommodating with getting us to go over to the Cavalier Inn, so we ended up going to the Cavalier Inn,” fourthyear College student Rachel Boisjolie said. “They had a special discount for people who had been booked with the Excel because they knew it wasn’t under our control.” There are also several other options for lodging during Final Exercises. Many students are turning to Airbnb, an Internet-based service that allows users to rent out rooms from other users. However, dealing with an individual through Airbnb is much different than dealing with a large hotel, and some students had their accommodations fall through before graduation. Fourth-year College student Hannah Beaman said she had reservations at an Airbnb until the property’s owner canceled on her and her
family. “The owner got pregnant, so they had to cancel their trip and they were going to be in their house, so we had to move kind of last minute — maybe three months ago — and now we’re 30 minutes out,” Beaman said. “All the close places were definitely taken.” The University itself also provides students with another option by opening up the Alderman Road dormitories for families, which can be booked through University Conference Services. An additional consideration for many during graduation is dining. Many restaurants are also fully booked for graduation weekend. Farrell Vangelopoulos, the owner and manager of the Ivy Inn Restaurant, said the restaurant normally opens up reservations for graduation Jan. 15 each year and are completely booked by the middle of March. “[Final Exercises] weekend is the busiest of the year — probably twice the amount of business of a normal night,” Vangelopoulos said. Courtney Jonas, general manager of the Downtown Grille, said the restaurant will be busy throughout the Final Exercises weekend. About 350 people will be going to the Down-
town Grille on Saturday night, with a slightly smaller number of 280 and 260 for Friday and Sunday, respectively. “This is our busiest weekend by far,” Jonas said. “We’ll have some fall weekends especially depending on
who’s in town for football, or parents weekend is really big for us, the Virginia FIlm Festival is really big for us, but by far Graduation weekend is the busiest of the year.”
Maddie Oxford | The cavalier daily
Many restaurants, including those on the Downtown Mall, are fully booked for graduation weekend.
StudCo leaders to stay in Charlottesville to work on initiatives Summer work focuses on developing student resources, auditing appropriations processes Jenna Wichterman | senior writer Student Council will be keeping busy this summer developing new educational resources for students and working on numerous other initiatives. Sarah Kenny, a third-year College student and Student Council president, said she will be remaining in Charlottesville over the summer to work on the initiatives, along with Ty Zirkle, a second-year College student and vice president for organizations, Alex Cintron, a second-year College student and vice president for administration and David Birkenthal, a third-year College student and chair of the representative body. Kenny said she will be focusing on “compiling resources for students on our website to create a space that fills niche gaps for the student body” and reach all corners of the University. According to Kenny, these resources will mainly target first-year students and are meant to educate students about issues of healthcare, insurance, the Charlottesville civic engagement process, housing and landlord issues and knowing their rights when dealing with Charlottes-
ville and University police. In addition to developing these resources, Student Council will also conduct an external auditing process of Student Council’s appropriations process, as well as create a strategic diversity plan. Kenny and Zirkle are the two who will be responsible for instituting an auditing process for the student activities fee allocation process. Student Council allocates a student activities fee of roughly $1 million to various undergraduate and graduate CIOs that request funds. This fee comes from student tuition. Kenny said the funds are appropriated proportional to the amount that each group requests. Currently, the process is designed so that groups are expected to ask for more money than they need. Proportional cuts are made to their request so they end up with what is supposed to be the actual amount they need. However, Kenny said sometimes groups that don’t expect these proportional cuts to be made then get short-changed. “We need to define some more
standard metrics about what utility maximization means in terms of distributing funds,” Kenny said. Kenny said that, as a result of the current process, 60 percent of the student activities fee funds Student Council is responsible for go to club sports because they know how to effectively request funds. She said another one of the problems with the current appropriations process is that they don’t have enough information about the impact of where the funds are going. “We don’t have great metrics on use for a lot of other groups, and we don’t really have an ethic about quality of impact, number of students impacted, areas that are lacking in terms of quality of student life [and] areas that have funding elsewhere,” Kenny said. Student Council also hosted a Research-a-Thon this past April where students researched “best practices” for diversity at other schools. This summer, Kenny and her team will synthesize this research and issue a report with suggestions about how to improve diversity at the University.
“We want this to be a resource for CIOs who are looking at their application processes and little tips about what they can do there,” Kenny said. “We want Greek life to be able to use this. We want faculty members who are trying to have conversations about diversity with their students, but don’t know how to, to be able to use this.” The strategic diversity plan will focus on how to increase diversity at the University in areas such as a new student orientation, admissions, faculty hiring and the Multicultural Student Center. “The strategic diversity plan is something that Student Council leadership is working on in support [of] other student leaders,” Kenny said. “We definitely saw ourselves more as providing some manpower and behind-the-scenes resources and support to develop this and elevate the voices of students who are leading the charge in the Eliminate the Hate Campaign.” “This summer is going to be a lot about setting things up to hit the ground running in the fall,” Kenny
said. Liam Wolf, a third-year Engineering student and Student Council chief of cabinet, will also be in Charlottesville for the beginning of the summer to help out. Wolf said his summer work will be “facilitating the efforts of our committees this summer and ensuring that the cabinet is equipped to begin its work come fall.” He will also be ensuring that all the chairs of Student Council are up to date, since many of the cabinet chairs will begin implementing projects, including a voter registration initiative and supporting Madison House summer volunteer efforts. “The entire point of the exercise is to have real, actionable plans for all the things that they do,” Wolf said. Kenny said in the past, student leaders working on projects over the summer was the norm. But in recent years, an increased pressure for students to get summer internships has decreased the number of student leaders on Grounds over the summer.