The American Medical Student Association (AMSA) was scheduled to hold a nurse’s panel on Sept. 23 in the Multicultural Center in Building 4. The event was supposed to start at 3:00 p.m. and end at 4:30, but even thirty minutes past the scheduled start, there was no one in sight.

The supposed panel was abysmal, and it is not because of the presentation. It is because no one was there. Organizers of the event were nowhere to be found, making it hard to know its status. There were also no representatives around to explain what was going on and no experts to talk to. The place was empty besides some students, who lost interest and almost immediately left the building. The only people that were left were a few students who weren’t even participating in the panel.

It is very hard to blame anyone for what went wrong. There seemed to be a lack of communication as to whether the event was cancelled, because the room reserved for the panel was set up and ready to go. There is not much known about the event, since it didn’t really happen. From what could be gathered, some of the students were biology majors and the room was reserved by a student.

Overall, this event was a disaster. There are no indicators that there was even an event going on in the room that they reserved, except for the folding chairs that remained empty for the event’s scheduled duration, and the projector screen that was set up. There was a severe lack of advertisement for the panel. The only way I found out about it was through an email sent to me by a colleague. There also seemed to be no incentives placed on the event to get students to attend. The event’s sudden cancellation at the last minute was very unprofessional; if it was even cancelled. At least have the decency to warn the people who set aside the time just to go to this event. These people had things to do and warning them was only right. Even a last minute word of this panel’s apparent “cancellation” would’ve been much appreciated.

Hopefully, the organizers of the panel would at least make an effort to speak on what went wrong and be more professional when cancelling their events. The panel didn’t deserve this failure and hopefully it won’t be done again in the future.