Space has always been a major issue on campus. There's now have over 130 student groups wanting to book spaces for practice and meetings and finally, after two years of hard work, we have managed to expand our room booking offering.
Space has always been a major issue on campus. We now have over 130 student groups wanting to book spaces for practice and meetings and finally, after two years of hard work, we have managed to expand our room booking offering.
Co-President, Societies and Media, Brianna Middleton Macpherson presented a paper to the College Executive Team on the issue of room bookings and said of the increase in available facilities: "Ever since I have been involved with Student Activities, we been struggling for space to accommodate our ever growing student groups.
"When I was first elected Societies Officer in 2013 we had 18 rooms and 90 student groups. At the start of this year we had 21 rooms and 130 groups – something had to change!"
"It has been my mission to ensure we were allocated more space on campus. This year I wrote a paper and brought it to the Principal, Registrar and Vice Principals at our monthly College/SU Exec Meeting and requested that the matter of lack of space on campus for activities was addressed."
"As a result we’ve been allocated 11 new rooms for student groups to use; including some big flat spaces and a couple of new lecture theatres."
Longer Opening Hours
This increase comes on the back of work Brianna did in Term One, which saw her deliver on her manifesto point of opening the Students' Union building for longer each day. She continued: "We’ve also been able to utilise the SU building more for extracurricular activities in the evening due to the SU building being open 12 hours a day – another manifesto point I had last year!"
"Tommy’s Kitchen is now open in the evening, meaning our student groups can use the Main Hall, Rialto and Tommy’s for their activities in the evenings. This has greatly benefited some of our active societies such as Ballroom and Latin Dancesport who often have over 40 people at their lessons. It has also meant we’ve managed to ratify one of our newest societies, Pole Fitness who can now train in the Main Hall."
"Room bookings are one of the most important services we provide to student groups on campus, without space they cannot run their activities – simple. That is why this has been a big priority for me this year and why I am so relieved we finally have more spaces to book!"
The Union is still working hard to open up more spaces around campus for student groups to use and are in continued dialouge with the College about making this a possibility. We'd like to hear from you regarding what spaces you think would be good to use on campus - for example, would societies like to run their activities on Wednesday afternoons? Could we have more spaces on weekends? Please get in touch and let us know what you’d like to see more of!
See a list of all the rooms we have managed to open up for students since the beginning of the academic year:
- Bourne Annex: BA290
- Moore Annex: MX034
- Bourne Lecture Theatre: BLT1
- Horton Lecture Theatre: HLT1
- Mcrea Building: MC201
- Mcrea Building: MC219
- Windsor Building: WIN04, WIN05 WIN105
- Main Hall due to Tommy’s Kitchen being open later
- Stumble Out for performances and rehearsals
- Other SU building spaces in evenings Rialto, Tommy’s