Yes to Student Center

LettersHeather Lucas — Published November 16, 2010

When most people say that school is a home away from home, they don’t mean the classroom. Seriously, in what way is a classroom similar to a living room, a kitchen or a bedroom? Might they by any chance mean a student centre?

I wouldn’t know, since Concordia is the only major educational institution in Canada not to have a place where people could meet outside the classroom, host events, grab a bite at the student café and do other life-fulfilling aspects under one roof. Instead, we have a scattered campus, one that is highly dependent on its surrounding environment.

When the most prominent area on campus to promote, display art, meet, study and relax altogether is the library building, something is wrong here. Concordia does not have a student community and for that reason suffers both the tangible and intangible consequences that this might bring.

The tangibles are more study, clubs, meeting, conference and lounge spaces only for students. The intangibles are the things we can’t put a price on no matter how hard we try. The student centre is meant to be an identifiable building, a community centre, where people meet, talk and make new friends.

But the most important intangible asset remains the reputation this building will bring to your degree. Our current ranking among Canadian universities suffers because we don’t have a home away from home to call a home. Our neighbouring schools accomplish tons more since they have a space managed and maintained by students.

Besides, our current food options aren’t healthy, our student space is limited and bleak, our conference rooms are limited and subsequently students are turned away by security since we were limited by the size of the room.

A new student centre would change the vision and reputation of our university. The first hand proof that lies right under our noses is the MB building that significantly boosted our business school’s prestige on the world stage.

Our campus currently resembles Mark Twain’s book he never got to finish, Beethoven’s unwritten symphony, or a painting that never got to see the final stroke of brush. We are incomplete as a campus without a student centre.

—Heather Lucas,
CSU President

This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 14, published November 16, 2010.