Donned with backpacks and red jackets, 1,000 City Year members flooded onto campus from June 1 to 5 to celebrate the organization’s 15-year anniversary.

Though Curry Student Center Director of Operations Bob Grier said the event was not meant to disturb the students, the presence of so many guests did not go unnoticed.

Students watched as the group performed exercises in campus parking lots and student groups with offices in the Curry Student Center were forced to share their building and meeting rooms with the guests.

“They just inundated the campus,” said Ian Mancinelli, a middler chemical engineering major, who said he spends time in the student center every day. “It was unbelievable. I had no idea why they were here.”

City Year is a national organization made up of high school and college aged students that spend about a year performing service in their communities, according to their Web site, www.cityyear.org.

While there were signs of City Year all around campus, the university did not provide students any notice of their arrival, Mancinelli said.

And Student Center Governing Board (SCGB) Chair Allyson Savin said students were not given an option either.

“I think the most frustrating part is not everyone knew the extent and the magnitude of a conference like that in our building for that many days,” Savin said.

She said not only were she and others who work in the building faced with an interruption of their daily lives, but also had trouble scheduling meeting rooms during the convention.

SGA Vice President for Financial Affairs Michael Benson said he was faced with a scheduling conflict because of the conference.

Also the chair of the Budget Review Committee (BRC), Benson said he had learned a room he had booked for his weekly meeting was already occupied upon arrival. Savin said the Northeastern University Huskiers and Outdoor Club (NUHOC) had a similar issue.

“This is a student center, not a conference center,” Benson said. “The sign on the outside of the door says Curry Student Center, not Curry Conference Center and students need to be kept in the mix and in charge.”

However, Grier said his office, along with the events planning office, did everything it could to work around students’ schedules.

“The students always have priority in the use of the Curry Student Center,” Grier said.

Benson said events such as conferences should have to go before the SCGB for approval. But Grier said while they have considered the suggestion, the City Year conference did not go before the board because it was not supposed to directly affect the students.

However, since the convention, Savin said legislation is currently in the works in the SCGB to correct the problems felt after last week’s event and give students more of an ownership over the building.

“Students need to know and have an understanding of what’s going on to ease some of the frustrations,” Savin, who is already working on drafting a manual, said. “If students knew they were going to be displaced or they knew the indoor quad wasn’t going to be a place where they could have grabbed CNN or grabbed a coffee … they would have gone to the library.”

Savin said the manual for SCGB’s use will not only address issues surrounding conferences, but also the use of the building by any outside parties.

“It bothers me all the time when people who aren’t from the school are here,” said Kevin Joyce, a junior computer engineering major. “Because we have to pay a student center fee and they don’t.”

As part of their tuition, all full-time undergraduate students pay $70 a semester for a “Student Center Fee” to keep up with the operations of the building. But with no blocked entrances, the building is open to the general public during all operating hours.

Still, other students said they realize the importance of holding conferences at Northeastern, and said they were not bothered by last week’s events.

“It didn’t affect me that much,” said Rob Johnson, a middler entrepreneurship and marketing major. “It didn’t stop me and my day.”

Johnson said he also did not know why the City Year group was on campus, though Kathy Newberry, director of conference and event planning, said plans had been in the works for over a year for the week-long conference entitled “Convention of Idealism,” which included a wide variety of activities, seminars and strategy sessions for the coming year.

“City Year holds their national convention at a different college campus every year and they rotate between different areas of the country,” Newberry said. “They set their sites on a Boston-area college campus for the 2004 convention and Northeastern was on a short list.”

After a site inspection, City Year officials decided the campus would be “wonderful for their event needs,” Newberry said. They subsequently rented out a large portion of the Curry Student Center, Blackman Auditorium, Matthews Arena and residence hall rooms in West Village A, Willis Hall and White Hall for their week-long event.

Still, Newberry said space was reserved for on-campus groups and other organizations looking for space.

Grier said while there wasn’t much flexibility in scheduling around the convention, the lower number of students on campus during the summer months made it possible for the students and City Year members to coexist.

“On a normal, typical quarter schedule, I don’t think we could have accommodated it,” Grier said, “but with the new semester schedule, we were able to.”

Vice President and Dean of City Year Charlie Rose said he was extremely pleased with the way the convention turned out, their largest yet. He said Northeastern could not have been more accommodating and his organization encountered no problems with students or overcrowding.

“The students were interested and acceptable and helpful to us,” Rose said.

Grier also said he thought the convention, the largest-scale event at NU in many years, was a success.

“It was a very positive experience for everyone,” Grier said. “I think they had a wonderful time.”

And the City Year convention was just one in a series of events the university is hosting throughout the summer. Most notably, the university will honor the Florida delegates with a reception in the West Addition the night before the Democratic National Convention (DNC) begins.

Grier said events held in the West Addition in the student center are the most disruptive to students, as the events force them out of the food court. But he said the DNC reception, to be held on a Sunday night, should have little effect on their schedules.

“It’s always a challenge when students are displacing students,” Grier said of the many student groups vying for space in the student center. “But when non-students are displacing students, we take that very seriously.”