Right outside the lab is, or should I say was, a student break room with tables, vending machines, and a microwave. This room has been taken away for what I understand is going to be a storage area.
This was a place for students to eat, socialize, and study. Especially for our commuter students with very limited time for a quick bite before entering the lab for class. This also provided the lab assistants an option to offer student who tried to bring food into the lab. They have relocated the vending machines to a small study room on the other side of the building. This room however does not provide a place to eat or study. Someone who was displeased with this move placed a sign in the break room encouraging students to email their feelings to the President. I did.
I recently found out that the café in the SSCB Building was also being taken away and turned into an office. I knew it was under construction, but like other students, assumed it would remain a café!
So here are my concerns… One, this is now three student body areas lost…a café, a study room, and a break room. The students are the life of this campus, the clients so to speak, of the University. We should be focused on creating an environment that makes the students fill welcomed and that our main focus is them and their success. Could a storage room not be moved to a basement? Is it possible that an additional storage room is not a necessity but a luxury? How do we keep student money on campus if we do not provide them with a place to enjoy their meals? Will we lose their meal money to off campus locations for lack of places to sit in the SSCB Building? There may be good answers to all of these questions but how would we know this? This brings me to my second concern, COMMUNICATION! Were these changes communicated to the student body?
It is common knowledge that the campus will soon be open to freshman and sophomore students and so I feel it necessary to point out that we are adding thousands of additional students and taking away student areas. I am no whiz at math but even I know that those numbers do not add up. Are there plans to add additional student areas? If so where and when? And if not, where do we plan to put the growing student body? I was approached at the Patio Café and informed that they plan to do some remodeling and wanted student opinions. This is great!!! This is communication! This is taking into account what the universities’ “clients” need!
I just feel like it is important that changes that are made on campus that affect the daily routines of the students should not be done without communication or consideration for those who would be directly affected.
Birdi Gomez
Sociology Major