The DJs and Vinyphiles Club recently filed a complaint to the Judicial Board after it was removed from the all-campus spring dance program. The dance, held April 2, was originally planned to feature two dance floors located at the Price Center Plaza and Ballrooms A and B. Due to a chance of rain, organizers decided to create only the one dance floor at the ballroom location. This caused the deejays from DVC, some of whom were UCSD alumni and had traveled from Los Angeles, to be turned away.
According to DVC Vice President Victor Chiu, the club had a verbal agreement with event organizer Sixth College Sophomore Senator Michael Dawson that five of its deejays would play music at the ballroom location in exchange for promotions through flyers and other forms of advertising. However, according to Chiu, the advertisements containing its club logo were minimal.
“We had agreed that we would have our promotions,” Chiu said. “We had asked that our name and logo be placed in the large PC banner, but there wasn’t any suggestion of our name at all. It was slightly disappointing.”
According to Dawson, who organized the all-campus dance, logos of the nine sponsors of the event were all the same size on the rave cards handed out.
“The whole case is ludicrous and there is no validity in their claim,” Dawson said.
Dawson also said that there was no formal contract or other agreement in regards to other forms of advertising.
“The verbal agreement was that the DVC would be mentioned on all of the rave cards, flyers and advertising that I had control of,” Dawson said.”
Dawson added that all of the sponsors were given the same type of advertisement.
“We had put their logo in all the ad cards and even A.S., who had given over $2,500, had the same size logo,” Dawson said. “[DVC was] equally represented with all other sponsors.”
Part of the complaint stem from Chiu’s lack of notice to club members that their services would no longer be needed for the dance.
“When it came down to it, to the actual party, [Dawson] didn’t really talk to me,” Chiu said. “He left us out in the dark.”
Chiu said that DVC was supposed to receive a call by 3:30 p.m. on April 2 about the possibility of rain changing the set-up of the dance. According to Chiu, an alternative would have been to separate the ballrooms so that DVC still would have been able to deejay.
“The interesting part of this is that tech services and PC operations were all for having two smaller ballrooms, but [the organizers] were still more willing to have only one dance floor,” Chiu said.
However, Dawson said splitting the ballroom into two dance floors would have forced organizers to turn students away because of the maximum capacity limits of the rooms.
“I thought that option was not plausible considering the capacity would be lowered, and more students would have been turned away from the event,” Dawson said. “We got capacity without splitting the ballrooms; if we would have split the ballroom, we would have had to let in 250 or so less people.”
Chiu said that some of the deejays he had scheduled for the dance traveled from Los Angeles and did not receive any notice that the set-up for the dance had been changed.
“There was a lot of effort made in solving scheduling problems for the event and that made it doubly disappointing,” Chiu said. “The basic contract was advertising for services and that was the big kicker, even if the party had not gone through.”
However, Dawson disputed the claims that he had not informed DVC members about the change. Dawson added that there was no formal agreement regarding the possibility of rain and he did call DVC members at 3:30 p.m. on April 2.
“There was no ‘what if in case of rain agreement’ because I didn’t think it would rain,” Dawson said. “I called DVC as soon as the PC tech people had to cancel the outside part of the event around 3:30 p.m. I didn’t want to do it, but I had no choice — it was either [turn away] DVC or turn away students.”
The Judicial Board met on April 21 and decided that it will hear the case within the next few weeks. Judicial Board Chair Aaron Ezroj said that it must check the availability of those involved in the case.
“The schedule of the Judicial Board in terms of the case will be any time within the next two weeks,” Ezroj said. “We probably won’t know a date set for the hearing until next Monday or Tuesday.”
According to Chiu, if the DVC wins the case, they will ask for a full page ad in The Guardian as compensation.
