Royal Library: Criticism is unfair

Royal Library organisers respond to debate over Black Diamond party Friday 17 September.

by Uffe Paulsen

As the organisers of the start-of-semester party in The Black Diamond last Friday 17th of September we would like to clear up a few mistakes and misunderstandings in the University Post’s article 'Black out at the Black Diamond'.

First of all we are very sorry that a lot of people could not join the party. This was though not, as stated in the article, due to a bottleneck at the entrance, but simply due to the venue being full. As for all other public events we have a permission from the fire authorities that allows a certain amount of people in the building, and when this number is reached the doors must be closed.

Unfortunately it took almost 2 hours from the closing of the doors before enough guests had left so we could let more in. In the mean time our security staff – which did not consist of only one person as stated, but 4-6 persons – organised a queuing area outside the main doors.

No 'screaming crowd'

Our estimate from the staff on the ground and our staff who monitored the situation on our CCTV is that at the peak around 600 people were on the square outside the Black Diamond, not, as stated in the article, more than 2.000 people.

The closed doors and establishing of the queuing area of course led to some discussion with the party hungry students, but that did not in our experience amount to a “screaming crowd”, and there was generally a friendly, if lively, atmosphere. A police car that had randomly passed by left again as they felt our staff had the situation under control. They did therefore not, as the article states, help solve “the situation.”

After the queuing area had been organised and the long wait for enough people to leave was over, we let hundreds of students into the party during the second half of the evening and at the end of the night we had had around 2.600 guests at the party.

Experience for next year

We are of course happy with the huge interest for the party but we are also working hard on using our experiences in the planning of next year’s party.

We can not change capacity of the building, but apart from that we want everything to run as smoothly as possible. Amongst other things we are looking at how to organise the queuing area in the best way and into different models for letting people in for example with pre-booking or priced tickets.

Uffe Paulsen
Organiser
Students Only!
The Royal Library

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