With BOSM right around the corner, Abhinav Singh, the CoSSAcn of the Department of Reception and Accommodation, provided a brief overview of his department’s work.
RecNAcc is responsible for procuring and distributing inventory for every club, department, and sports team, along with setting up the required infrastructure and acquiring the permissions to do so. The catering needs of the participants, “Adventure Zone”, and food stalls are managed by them. The department also handles the travel arrangements of the attendees.
As their name suggests, the department is tasked with accommodating participants, performers, and guests. This has ended up as quite the chore because of issues like the staff quarters and certain blocks of Meera Bhawan undergoing renovation and an Indo-German conference being scheduled during BOSM. After negotiations with the Dean of Administration, the Estate Management Unit, and the Chief Warden, which started in the previous semester, the department managed to accommodate the female participants in one block of Malviya studio apartments as well as in the 3rd and 4th blocks of Meera Bhawan. High-profile guests will be accommodated in places outside the campus as rooms at VFAST will not be available.
Learning their lessons from how the rains played spoilsport in the previous edition of BOSM, the department is better equipped this time with tarpaulin sheets, custom-made covers, and general waterproofing paraphernalia for various sports and the food stalls area. They will be tarping the pitch, covering the fields, and putting up tents made of more robust material.
Abhinav’s experience as a CoSSAcn has been fun, yet challenging, as he has had to face problems hitherto unhandled. RecNAcc collaborated with the Department of Visual Media (DVM) and made an electronic system to handle the inventory; thus, cutting down drastically on paper usage. For him, it has been a ‘smooth ride’ with the CoSSAc. In spite of all the extensive groundwork, Abhinav concluded by saying ‘You can never be completely prepared. It’s always a new challenge in every fest.’