CAB searches for four qualified individuals

The Campus Activities Board is working to fill four officer vacancies.

According to CAB Assistant Director, Jessica Ward, the organization is accepting applications for a Bobcat Nights chairperson, a cultural diversity chairperson, a concert and dance chairperson and an ideas and issues chairperson.

CAB Advisor Suzette Zompetti said three people have resigned from the board, while two people have been released. Zompetti said one senior resigned because of a need to focus on getting into graduate school. Another resigned because it was more than the student was willing to put in.

“No one faults anybody for that kind of thing,” Zompetti said. “You don’t know what you’re getting into all the time until you’re in it.”

Another student resigned from CAB so he could join a fraternity and decided he couldn’t do both.

Two other officers were released from their positions. One was released because of a failure to meet the bare minimum GPA requirement of 2.5.

“We have a GPA requirement because it’s really important to me to make sure that the board members focus on their scholastics and their academics first and that they are board members second and sometimes that’s hard,” Zompetti said. “We had a student who was very talented but she just didn’t find that balance and so we’ve had to go our separate ways this semester and she’s very excited about the prospect of coming back to the board next year.”

Another student was released because of a failure to meet expectations.

Former Bobcat Nights Coordinator Mandy Adams said she was given the choice to resign or to be let go. Adams said the decision was a peaceful agreement between the executive board, the advisor and herself.

“I have no hard feelings towards CAB or the people on CAB,” she said. “I felt like I was stuck between a rock and a hard place where if I took ownership of my programs the way I wanted to, I would get into trouble. Whereas, when I stepped back and took suggestions from the executive board, I wasn’t taking enough control of my program.”

Zompetti said the board takes a very developmental approach, and people are put on probation before they are ever released.

“This board is a very forgiving board,” Zompetti said. “It’s a last resort for them to release someone or encourage them to resign but it’s something that has to be done.”

CAB Director Will Dennison said each case was dealt with on an individual basis.

“Basically, the situation was in the interest of being as affective as possible,” Dennison said. “There were some cases where people had lost interest in doing their duties as chairs and in other cases they were just unable to fulfill their duties.”

Director of Student Activities Eddie Howard said being a part of CAB is a job.

“From time to time in jobs people don’t meet expectations so if you don’t meet expectations you’re asked to either not continue your job or you’ll be replaced or whatever, and if you’re doing your job well, you’ll remain,” Howard said.

Howard said that CAB is also a very time-consuming organization and changes in classes, workload and lifestyle also lead people to decide they can’t put in as much time as before.

Zompetti agreed that CAB is a time-consuming organization.

“CAB is a very labor intensive organization, probably more so than any other organization on campus,” Zompetti said. “The market that we’re in, in terms of providing campus programming and campus events can be a very complex one. It can be one that requires a lot of time, a lot of forethought, a lot of organization.”

Zompetti said despite the recent problems, she thinks the board has been very successful as a whole.

“We have had a rough year this year, both with having the level of commitment with some students who took on leadership positions and with handling additional programmatic responsibilities that were not planned for, and so I think that given that the board has been successful in a lot of ways. We have doubled attendance from last year to this year, we’ve served twice as many people as we did this time last year. Bobcat Nights attendance is up. So I think that when you look at that as a whole you can see that it’s a very stressful burden to bare,” Zompetti said.

Applications are being accepted in MSU 143 until Jan. 22 and interviews will be held Jan. 23. Zompetti said there are applicants for all four positions.

“Last year we went the whole year and didn’t release anybody. This year, it just happens that we’ve had to release two people. Three people have resigned and two people have been released,” Zompetti said. “It’s not something that we’re happy about. Obviously this disrupts the board’s harmony so to speak and their cohesion going into a semester that is packed more full than any of us I think imagined when we were setting up the calendar, but the philosophy is if you’re not part of the solution then you’re part of the problem. With a fast-paced board that has two programs a week or more it just mandates having somebody who is committed and willing to put in the work and put in the effort and the payoff is getting to see 700 students at a Midnight Breakfast having the time of their life and knowing that you were a part of that.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Jan 24 2003. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry