Frequently Asked Questions

To request space at the Graduate Center, approved staff members and students with booking privileges must fill out the online room reservations form.

Approved staff members can sign on to the Room Reservations form with their Graduate Center username and password. This is the same username and password used to log on to your work computer.

You can send Room Reservations an email to roomres@gc.cuny.edu, and we will help you with this information. Normally, this person is your assistant program officer, office manager, event manager, etc. for the program or department they represent.

Students and staff must request spaces through their department, program, or chartered student organization. (See above for details.)

After you have submitted the form online, a “do not reply” automatic email copy of your request will be sent to the email address you entered on the form. 

While we will try to respond sooner, please allow three to five business days.

Please forward the copy of the “do not reply” email confirmation to roomres@gc.cuny.edu and inquire about the status of your request.

Please contact roomres@gc.cuny.edu and request assistance.

You can reach Room Reservations by email at roomres@gc.cuny.edu.

Your event is confirmed when you receive an email from Room Reservations communicating that your event is confirmed and you have a five-digit booking number.

Room Reservations works with scheduling software that assigns a unique booking number to each reservation made. Once you have a five-digit booking number, that number is unique to your event.

Please search through your inbox using the title of the event you are booking or an email from “GC Room Reservations.” Booking numbers are listed on the weekly Schedule of Events and the Monthly events schedule. Contact Room Reservations and they will help you.

The booking email thread starts when the online room reservations request form is submitted. It’s important to keep communication in one thread not only because of the large volume of events handled by Room Reservations but also for clients to keep track of their events and correspondence.

Depending on the details of your event we recommend that you submit your request at least four months in advance. If you are not sure, please reach out to Room Reservations to discuss planning and timelines of your event.

Last-minute events are difficult to accommodate and planning an event without enough notice may result in complications for the event planner and poor attendance.

If this is unavoidable and your event is less than two weeks out, please reach out to Room Reservations via phone and ask to have your request flagged as priority so you are given a quick response.

It is the responsibility of the event coordinator to contact Audio-Visual (212-817-7330 or ITMediaServices@gc.cuny.edu) to arrange for AV needs.

It is the responsibility of the event coordinator to contact Facilities (212-817-7730 or facilities@gc.cuny.edu) to arrange for room set-up.

The Graduate Center has two approved caterers for use in the public reservable spaces:

Caterer: Blake & Todd (25-person minimum on orders)
Contact: Sean Martin, Managing Director
Phone: 917-565-2854
Email: sean@bteventsnyc.com

Caterer: Relish Caterers ($2000 minimum on orders)
Contact: Shoshana Paris-Saper, Catering Specialist
Phone: 212-228-1672 | C: 914-451-8502
Email: shoshana@relishcaterers.com

Always book the space before confirming speakers and panelists or sending out any invitation or other communication about the event. Once you receive written confirmation from Room Reservations with a five-digit booking number you can confirm the other parts of your event.

A five-digit booking number is a unique number that is assigned to your event.

Your booking number is important because this number is used to track your correspondence for this event from the point you filled out the form until you have received confirmation and possibly submitting a cancellation. It’s the history of your event in one email thread. This ensures that requests and changes to your booking do not get lost or missed.

To cancel an event, please reply to the booking email thread that contains your five-digit booking number and request for your event to be canceled.

Once you know for sure from any and all parties that your event is canceled, please inform Room Reservation immediately. This way the space can be released back into available inventory for another member of the Graduate Center to use.

If you request a particular space and it’s not available because it’s already confirmed for another event, you will be given the option to be on the waitlist for that space, which gives you first right of refusal if there is a cancellation.

This is not a guarantee of space, but it is an option when you have a space already reserved for your event, and you would like the opportunity to move your event to another space if there is a cancellation.

A tentative hold means that we are holding space for your event, but it is not confirmed. If you know that you have an event on tentative hold then you must either confirm or cancel the event in writing.