Offices to be renovated in favour of communal space
University of Guelph’s Central Student Association (CSA) has announced a proposal for renovations to the CSA club space on the second floor of the University Centre for 2017.
The CSA held a town hall event at the Brass Taps on Wed, Nov. 2 to present updates and to hear feedback from students and club representatives.
With only 27 offices for over 100 CSA clubs on campus, the proposal aims to completely overhaul the current floor plan to create a communal, bookable space available to all clubs for office hours, events, and a variety of programming. The CSA will also provide storage facilities for clubs to use, in place of the storage that some clubs would traditionally have in their offices.
“Everyone always needs space, so we came to the conclusion that shared meeting rooms will benefit the most students,” said Ryan Shoot, finance and operations commissioner for the CSA, in an interview with The Ontarion.“It will be more accessible for clubs to have a space to come and actually be a club, which is something when you look back at different years there’s been that constant push.”
The CSA reached out to all clubs at the university through a series of emails and surveys sent out through LISTSERV to provide feedback on the proposed changes to the CSA club space. In an attempt to garner more feedback, these emails were sent during points in the semester when club administration would be the most active–during the clubs’ accreditation and training periods.
While the response to the survey was underwhelming, with only 31 clubs responding to the survey, the results showed that clubs that currently had space on the second floor of the UC enjoyed having that space, and those who were left without an office were interested in the idea of having their own designated club space.
During the town hall, representatives from various CSA clubs voiced their opinions on the transition from private offices to a communal club space. The Guelph FLASH Club, as well as the Outdoors Club, shared concerns over storage capabilities. The FLASH club also stated that its “office provides a safe space for its members,” and this safe space may not be present in a communal club environment.
Shoot assured the audience that “all CSA monitored space is a safe space,” and that the CSA would be providing ample storage for all clubs to house their respective materials.
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For organizations like Universities Fighting World Hunger (UFWH) that do not currently have designated office space, the proposed communal space aims to provide a location to coordinate, meet, and store their supplies more effectively.
“A lot of clubs do need office hours, but outside of a few hours per week, they just use their office for storage,” said UFWH executive Aidan Pucchio. “I think if there is storage provided as the CSA mentioned, that renting the offices for a couple hours a week for each club would be a totally acceptable solution.”
While bookable meeting room space was the main point of discussion during the town hall event, Shoot outlined other aspects of the renovations that aim to benefit the students involved in CSA clubs.
“Additionally, we want to create a club commons where there’s social space and a social aspect that doesn’t need to be booked. It can be a space where students can just come, be together, be with their club, and still have that social environment,” he explained. “In addition, with the renovations, we’re hoping to put in some quiet study space as well. As you see, the hallway now is pretty noisy because students are constantly in the hallway. We’re hoping to be able to put up desks with outlets for students to study at, and the club commons will become that more social space.”
Before the renovations commence, the CSA will have to go to the UC board with their proposal and raise $25,000 to fund the project.Shoot explained that student fees will not be raised to complete the renovations.
With the drastic changes being discussed, Shoot had hoped to receive more responses to the survey than what was submitted, but understands the difficulty in clubs, and club executives, being engaged with the CSA.
“I think it’s a constant struggle. Students who run clubs already are over-involved students that are putting their time and effort into something that they really enjoy, that’s amazing in itself. When you move forward with that, getting them to answer different surveys, getting them to go to clubs training, participate in club days, it’s a lot of work and I obviously recognize that and I recognize that in the responses that I received. I did also notice that the responses I did receive were thankful that we were actually asking, because it’s never been asked. The fact that it is so low though, it sits a little uneasy with me in the fact that I would like to gain more of a voice for them, and that’s why we had the town hall.”
To help with communication between the CSA, university clubs, and the undergraduate student body, the CSA is undergoing a rebranding initiative and establishing a mandate for the organization.
“We don’t have a mission, vision, or values, and I think it’s really important that we find one. So what we’re doing currently is we’ve hired someone to come in and look at our organization and see what we really are, see what we’re going towards and see what we want to be,” Shoot explained.
The goal of the new “Mission, Vision, Values” program is to find a clear mandate for the CSA, which will include a survey that will go out to all undergraduate students to find out what the CSA is to them.
“We feel as if we’ve been stuck in this rotation where a new executive comes in and they have an idea, but 12 months later a new executive comes in and they have a new idea. We need to nail down what our students want and we need to have executive members come in and run on those ideas, and really make those things happen.”
If the proposal is approved by the UC board, Shoot hopes that the renovations will commence over next summer.
Image by Kylie Armishaw.