Geer Week event moved to new venue after concerns about student comfort and safety at the Ranch

A long-running engineering event was moved to a new location because of concerns students wouldn’t be comfortable having the event at The Ranch following the death of a young man in November and the ensuing controversy.

Geer Week, hosted by the Engineering Students’ Society (ESS) to celebrate engineering student life on campus, is a competition between different engineering disciplines and consists of 22 events between January 11 and 19. This year, the Battle of the Bands competition on January 18, which has historically been held at The Ranch Roadhouse, was held at Union Hall.

On November 16, Mohamed Abdi died after being kicked out of The Ranch on a cold night. His was the second death related to The Ranch in the last year. In November 2017, Tyler Emes died of hypothermia after leaving The Ranch. After these two incidents, an online petition was started to have the staff trained or to have the venue closed altogether.

The Battle of the Bands competition involves teams submitting a band and dance troupe to play songs around their theme. The event was usually held at The Ranch due to the venue size — as it’s able to accommodate the 300 to 500 people attending the event — said Dayton Chen, president of the ESS. While early in November, 2018 the ESS and the Interdepartmental Sciences Students’ Society (ISSS) hosted a Glow Ball at The Ranch, the recent controversy caused the ESS to change the venue for the Battle.

“While we aren’t necessarily making a stance on what we think is right or if we think the company should be operational or not, we are very cognizant of the fact that some people aren’t comfortable with the way that The Ranch runs their business,” Chen said. “Some people aren’t comfortable with how this isn’t the only occurrence.”

Chen said the change was made in November so more students would feel safe at the event. The change to Union Hall was difficult, he said, because all of the organization had already been done for the 77th iteration of Geer Week, and the new venue cost the ESS more than The Ranch, which subsidizes events put on by student groups. However, he said the ESS was willing to take the loss to ensure the safety and comfort of participants.

“We felt that it was a responsibility for us to not just think about the monetary value,” Chen said.

Chen said that over the last five years, Geer Week has focused more on student safety and risk management in an effort to make sure people feel safe and able to participate as much as they want to. He added that as president of ESS, it’s his role to make sure students are comfortable, and that means making these decisions.

“If students aren’t feeling safe for whatever reason, that’s something that we have to address, and you can’t necessarily always rely on someone else doing this,” he explained.

At the end of Geer Week, Chen said ESS would sit down and evaluate the new venue and see if they want to continue at Union Hall, or go back to The Ranch if the safety concerns are addressed. Overall, the change of venue shouldn’t have had a big impact on the enjoyment of the event, Chen explained.

“It just fun, it’s a good atmosphere to get everyone together for, which is why the venue isn’t necessarily important,” he added.