The night! (Part 1). Protocol wahala.

After weeks of preparations the day* was finally here. The event was scheduled for 11th February at 8PM.

Let’s not rush into it just yet. Just a few hours to the day of the event, a very big issue came up. An issue that almost cost us the event itself.

The thing is that the school authorities had learned about our event and was not very excited about it, to say the least. So they said they are not allowing the event to happen.

The problem was that, as they said, we were supposed to be registered as a club on the campus before we could have an event on the campus. But we knew this already, that was why we went and partnered with that particular hostel so it would be like it was the hostel that was having their event and we were only sponsors. This was the plan from the start. But we ended up promoting the event in our name so much the hostel was just nothing more than a venue.
The plan was that, we would go ahead and do everything as we have planned and not let the fact that we are not a part of the school hinder or alter our plans, and then letting the hostel be the body to represent the event in any official matters. But the hostel president did not understand this part and still managed to push us to official matters. It got the authorities a little bit pissed that we were not registered as a body on the campus and wanted to do an event on the campus. We made them understand that we are business just like those others that the students write to for sponsorships for this events. Only thing we did wrong was bringing ourselves. So we had to get punished for that.

So basically it was a no. But everything was not solely just because of us. The authorities already had a problem with that particular hostel; they do not like the way they do their parties. Even though they are the top hostel of the school that makes the school fun but holding social events; parties and stuff.

It was at around 5:30PM that they told us they were not going to allow us to host the event there(or anywhere in the campus for that matter) so we had to find another venue close to the campus as possible that same evening before the next day, because we were not going to postpone the date of the event. We were not willing to change the date.
We quickly rushed to a lodge close to the campus, where the students do go to for some of their parties and social events and in some cases just to relax. The place has a pool, a bar, a sitting area and a chef. The place is basically made to host parties.

We got there around 7PM. At this point we knew we were coming to ask for a bit too much as we wanted to book the place for the next day while we were there only a few hours to the day we wanted the place. So we just went ahead to explaining to them the situation we have found ourselves and they were so kind to understand us and offer us the place for our event despite the very extremely short notice. We had to make about 60% deposit tho. We did and rushed back to campus to announce.
While we were still there after we had gotten the place we called our graphic designer to make a flyer for the change of venue. In fact, some of us had already posted it on our statuses. We needed to, because word was already going out that the event had been canceled by the school authorities.

After booking the place we again rushed back to the campus at the initial venue, the school hostel, to let them about the change of venue. Surprisingly we got there to meet the very “authority”, the Vice dean of student affairs of the university at the hostel talking to the students there. We joined the conversation and after a long while of back and forth to the extent of calling the ladies in the hostel to ask them about their opinion of the event whether they liked it or not, he finally agreed to the let us use the place for our event.
Now we had to called the lodge and cancel our bookings again. Booking we made not more than 2 hours ago. And which we had to explain our situation to them to understand us and give us their place!
This was around 9:30 to 10PM.
We saw the vice dean off who has a bungalow in the campus. We dispersed off to our various places to get some rest for the long day ahead.

We would pause this story here and continue in another post. The story has come out too long, longer than expected.

This is only a gist of the event, to give you an idea of what to expect in our subsequent post.