Do you want to celebrate May Day in organisational premises?

Traditionally, our answer to this has been ‘too bad – you cannot’. This year, we may make exceptions to this. Get the organisations of your building together, make a plan for a safe and controlled event and submit your proposal to HYY by 5 April – your event just might come to life!

Organising events in the organisational premises of the Student Union of the University of Helsinki has generally been forbidden 30 April–1 May. The main reason for this is safety: the celebration of May Day easily draws very large crowds. If all HYY’s organisational premises were to hold an event approaching the maximum capacity of the space at the same time, the fire safety limits for the entire building would definitely be exceeded. The central location of the New Student House in particular might also further complicate access control on May Day, with a larger number of students on the move than usual. The number of people could easily become unmanageable and the party get out of control. For this reason, organising parties on May Day has been forbidden.

The use of organisational premises will undergo major changes before autumn this year, and the established clusters formed by student organisations that have long operated in the premises will be disbanded. In the future, organisational premises will include more joint-use premises with different reservation practices, and no organisation will manage a specific space alone.

We have been contacted by organisations asking whether they could organise May Day events in organisational premises this year, considering that we will be parting with the premises soon after May Day. We understand the need for this and wish to facilitate the organisation of May Day events in organisational premises as an exception this year. However, we need to ensure that the events will not form a safety risk.

This year, we will allow one May Day event to be organised in each building in which HYY has organisational premises. The events must provide all organisations from the building in question that are interested in getting involved in organising the event with the opportunity to do so. In practice, an alliance of organisations can organise a party taking over the entire building, an academic dinner party on one floor or something on a smaller scale. Alina Hall is not available for these events. To organise an event, the alliance of organisations must submit a plan of the event to us by 5 April. This plan must include a comprehensive description of the nature and course of the event, how safety risks are taken into account and how access control is organised along with a list of the participating organisations. HYY reserves the right to either approve or reject the plans submitted to us. Only approved events may be organised in organisational premises on May Day.

For an event to be approved, the organisations must arrange official security stewards for it. Without them, we do not feel that an event can be safely organised on May Day. The security stewards must have security steward identity cards. You can ask HYY for reference on hiring security stewards from external operators.

The event must have one organisation in charge of it and one designated person in charge. This person is in charge of the course of the event and suspending the event if needed, for instance. The organisation in charge is liable to compensate HYY for any damages caused to the property or movable property.

In the case of the New Student House, the event and its arrangements may not begin before 5.00 pm on 30 April.

Applications may be submitted to janne.saranpaa@hyy.fi The applications must be submitted by 5 April. We can grant permission for good applications before the deadline for the applications passes.

More information:

Janne Saranpää
Specialist (organisations)
janne.saranpaa@hyy.fi