Faculty pay $200 to use Cambria Room

The Cambria Room in the Student Union

Asha Njeri

The Cambria Room in the Student Union

Gretchen Rundorff, Contributing Writer

Event planning is big deal—especially if you are the one paying for it.

The Cambria Room, utilized for events such as the Majors and Minors Fair or the Pitt-Johnstown Student Activities Fair, is available for use by faculty members and students for events.

The room may be requested for use via the Pitt-Johnstown “Campus Services” website, in which there is the button “Submit Request for Facility Space.”

From there, those wishing to request a room must fill out and submit a form and an Conference Service employee is to be in contact with the individual regarding the event’s details as well as other relevant information, said Student Government Association Secretary Casey Ansbro.

As Ansbro and the Student Government Association president Shelby Smith both said the room is free for use by faculty members and students.

However, this is not exactly the case. Conference Services actually bills faculty members as much as $200 per day for renting the room.

For students, however, the room remains free of charge, according to Emilee Barren at the Living Learning Center.

Other costs may be accrued for food or water for an event– or even ordering tablecloths, according to Smith. This was confirmed by Barren.

Thus, for faculty members who wish to use the room for events and conferences, the cost of the room and other associated charges may exceed $200 a day.

One faculty member, philosophy professor Martin Rice, said that, without the funding he received from the Office of the Vice President and Pitt’s Year of the Humanities initiative hosting, a meeting of the West Virginia Philosophy Society, the conference would not have been feasible.

It remains unclear, however, why exactly faculty members are charged for the room’s use, even though they enjoy a university affiliation and their profession often may necessitate engaging with others in meetings such as the one organized by Rice on Oct. 9.