Newly announced protocol for this Friday’s festival will require ERC residents to wear separate wristbands to gain entry to on-campus residential halls and apartments.
All Eleanor Roosevelt College residents will receive a distinct wristband to wear on the day of the Sun God Festival to gain access to all residential areas of ERC. The student body was informed in a May 6 letter from the A.S. Council that International House and The Village will be the only areas to exclude non-residents, but ERC was excluded from this list.
According to ERC Resident Dean Rey Guerrero, the new wristband policy has been implemented for the first time in ERC residential halls, apartments and International House to discourage the presence of residents’ guests during and after the festival. Guerrero told the UCSD Guardian that the resident advisors will be the only official means of disseminating this information to students before the May 16 festival. ERC resident advisors began distributing wristbands on Wednesday, May 14 and will continue to on Thursday, May 15.
Students will need one wristband to gain access to ERC residential halls, apartments and I-House and a separate wristband to gain access to The Village. A security staff composed of RAs and resident security officers will be patrolling the ERC section of campus to ensure that all of the inhabitants are wearing the correct wristband. They will focus on students exhibiting “deviant behavior.” ERC Residential Life will also fence off access to I-House and Scholars Drive.
Interim Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Alan Houston told former A.S. President Andy Buselt in a follow-up email to his April 9 A.S. Council meeting presentation that the no-guest policy “will only apply to the Village and I-House.”
Houston did not respond for comment by press time.
The May 6 email A.S. Council sent to all students stated that “the Village and I-House will be subject to a resident-only policy, and access will be limited to residents of those communities only.” There was no mention of whether the wristbands are necessary to gain access or of ERC being subject to the resident-only policy as well.
According to Guerrero, all of the additional costs for the new security features will be coming out of A.S. Concerts & Events regular security budget. ASCE did not respond for comment by press time. The ERC wristband policy is not mentioned on the Sun God Festival 2014 website.
