Next Friday's Winter Bash event will mark a return to the Sheraton Boston Hotel. It will be the first Winter Bash to use an entirely online ticketing system, though many aspects of the event will remain the same as they were last year.
Programming Board co-chairs Leo Greenberg and Meredith Dworkin, both seniors, decided to use the Sheraton Boston Hotel ballroom for this year's event because of its availability and ability to accommodate the number of people associated with the event, according to Office for Campus Life (OCL) Assistant Director David McGraw.
Programming Board organized this year's event to incorporate successful aspects of the event's previous two off-campus celebrations, according to Greenberg.
OCL Director Joe Golia said that the ballroom at the Sheraton Boston Hotel, which last hosted Winter Bash in 2010, will better suit the event than the ballroom at the Copley Place Marriott Hotel did last year.
"There are some pluses and minuses to every hotel," Golia said. "Last year, at the [Copley Place Marriott Hotel], once we were [on the floor with the ballroom] we were alone in our own event. At the Sheraton you can't close it off. This hotel has so many benefits, though, with the room being so much better and the ability to close off a 21-plus area."
McGraw said that the route to the ballroom this year would be shorter than last year's, which led all the way to the fourth floor.
"This venue is a little bit more conducive for a little bit shorter route into the event than last year [when it was on the fourth floor]," McGraw said. "We want to make everything as streamlined as possible and get people in as quickly as possible."
This year's coatroom will work like last year's, with three thousand hooks for students to hang their own jackets.
"We hope to run it very similar to how we ran it last year when we took home about a half a dozen coats, people who just left them or forgot them, as opposed to a couple years ago when we ended up with about 200 coats in our office," Golia said. "It obviously changed to make it a lot better."
McGraw said he recommends students bring coats they don't care too much about because the room won't have security.
When the Sheraton Boston Hotel hosted the first off-campus Winter Bash in 2010, students cited a poorly organized coat-check system as an event mishap. Event organizers have had a couple of years to figure out logistical problems since then, and McGraw said he expects the event to run smoothly.
"We're just trying to work with their security so that everyone stays safe and everyone has a good time," McGraw said.
Three thousand tickets will be made available and can be purchased at TuftsTickets.com from noon on Jan. 30 through noon on Feb. 3, the day of the event. After purchasing a $10 ticket, students will need to print their ticket rather than pick it up from the Mayer Campus Center, as was the process in past years, according to Greenberg.
Programming Board and OCL first used online ticketing for last semester's Fall Ball event. All 2,500 Fall Ball tickets were sold out in just over 12 hours, and some tickets were later put on sale at TuftsLife.com.
"Some people have been having trouble acclimating with the ticketing system, which can be a bit finicky at times," Greenberg said. "But hopefully people are starting to get used to it, so we won't have very many problems."
Other aspects of the event, such as the DJ, GrooveBoston, and the buses leaving from Aidekman Arts Center, will remain the same as last year, Greenberg said. Buses will depart from campus every half-hour between 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., with students boarding depending on the ticket purchased.
Since the event has become a staple of the start to the spring semester, organizers tried to limit the number of changes, McGraw said.
"We want to keep it true to what Winter Bash has been in the past, so we don't see the need for any drastic change," he said. "We feel that we have a good recipe down."
