By Hilde van den Berg
Ima Sammani is a 2nd semester Dutch student with Persian roots, majoring in Psychology and Economics. After being head-bartender in Elliott and spending a lot of her free time there already, she is now running for Downstairs Bar Chair to become even more involved in Elliott. She stands for realistic changes, and has many ideas on how to improve the downstairs bar experience.
Why are you running for?
I believe Elliott needs someone who already is experienced in working downstairs and knows exactly what has to be done for improvement. I am strategic, approachable and open for ideas. I want to make sure that Elliott is somewhere people love to visit and that we can be proud of, and I believe I have what it takes to put my qualities and experience into effect.
Do you have any particular changes or ideas in mind?
We have to pay attention to what the students need, since keeping the students satisfied is the key of a successful Elliott Bar. Some come to the bar to chat and socialize; others want to mostly dance. The bigger events (like St. Patrick’s Day) are very popular for dancing and drinking (a lot), but in between those big events are the smaller ones that aren’t very popular amongst us. I aim to cooperate with societies/boards to find suitable activities for these events, but in order to do this, the bar atmosphere should be improved too. As head-bartender, I’ve come to see that our suppliers are willing to cooperate with Elliott, since we are basically selling their products. I’ve already looked at different options and discussed this with the founder of the Barrel. Maintaining good relationships with the suppliers is a cost-effective approach that enables us to invest into the smaller events and the atmosphere downstairs in general, by adjusting simple aspects. The broken door, poor ventilation and lighting of the smoking room are examples of these changes.
The music currently seems to be an issue as well. If elected, I’ll cooperate with ParyCo to make sure they can carry out their biggest plans concerning the music.
Another issue we have is our parties generally being quite short. Since we can’t make them longer at the 02.00 end, I aim to make them longer at the start. Elliott used to have a happy hour from 23:00-00:00 in order to make it more appealing for the students to come to the parties earlier. In reality, people came in at 23:55 and ordered 10 drinks at once. If I become elected, I’m going to introduce happy-hour from 22:00 to 23:00 to make the parties vibrant again. Everybody’s probably going to do the same thing and come in and order 10 drinks five minutes before happy hour ends, but this would make the entire party start an hour earlier (!), and it’s small alterations like this that make the parties more animated.
Hilde van den Berg, Class of 2016, is a Psychology and Law major from Doetinchem, the Netherlands
