By: Olivia Krauth

The Recognized Student Organization Summit has been forced to make changes as non-traditional students, as well as coaches and advisers, have expressed discontent with how the required event is being scheduled.

Gordon Henry, coach of the U of L Racquetball Club, sent an email directed towards Victoria Spencer, graduate assistant to recognized student organizations at U of L. The email was in response to Spencer reminding all RSO advisers to sign up for the RSO Summit, a mandatory event for all RSOs. Spencer’s original email also requested advisers to sign up to OrgSync, the campus hub for all RSOs, in order to pre-register for the event.

“I’m not going to register with OrgSync, whatever that is, to simply register for your mandatory RSO summit,” said Henry in his original email. “In addition, the threatening tone of your message below is actually quite a disincentive for those of us involved in U of L Club Sports who are not younger undergraduate students (and, I suspect, many of the student members as well),” continued Henry.

The Louisville Cardinal reached out to Henry for further comment, and Henry declined to comment.

“Inevitably, when working with almost 400 student organizations, there will be instances of frustration on the part of both students and advisors,” Spencer wrote in an email to the Cardinal. “When we do hear of these instances, we take them very seriously, and make every effort to respond quickly and transparently.”

According to Spencer, this is not the first time that this issue has been brought to her attention. After similar concerns were vocalized last year, Spencer and others “met with representatives from the various graduate and professional organizations to make sure that we were meeting the needs of our non-traditional and professional students while still serving our undergraduate RSOs.”

“As a result of our conversations, we have scheduled the main Summit on an evening that would accommodate the majority of our students,” said Spencer. “We have significantly altered to format of the event and invested considerable resources to ensure that this meeting is as beneficial as possible.”

The summit is now held on three separate dates, with events on both the Belknap and Health Sciences campuses.