Need a new set of chairs for your dining room? Pick some up for free at the Student Centre.
Take your pick of baby-blue bar stools or ivory-white wooden chairs. If you can haul it out the door without anyone spotting you in your flight to the Village, grab a table as well. Now that the new tables and chairs aren’t anchored to the floors like the previous ones, what’s to stop you?
After all, you paid for them.
And they’re really nice—too nice, standing in stark contrast against the 20-year-old floors, which I imagined would be the first to go amidst the renovations.
When I read the notice about construction underway to “serve you better,” I tried to think of things that were wrong with the space, and I drew a blank.
If anything, the elevators are less than functional, as I discovered when my friend plummeted from the fourth floor to the main floor one night in the west elevator (don’t worry, he’s still alive and kicking). But in the renovations, the elevators were left untouched, save for a coat of white paint on the exterior doors.
Yes, white. White linoleum on the third and fourth floors, white coat of paint on the banisters and elevators, white tables, white chairs. If the renovations were aimed solely at making the Student Centre look better, they failed on four counts: one, white gets dirty fast; two, only part of the building looks fresh in contrast with many dated elements that were left untouched; three, the $6.6 million renovation is a waste of students’ money; and four, the renovations are still in the works.
Perhaps the Student Centre’s only plan of action known to us was “to serve you better,” because even they didn’t know what their plans were. Did removing a floor of tables and chairs, replacing them with new ones, laying down a fresh coat of paint, and upgrading the lounge chairs on the third and fourth floor really require an entire summer?
The renovations ate into Frosh week, and are continuing to eat into the school year. Every day of the continuing construction, the building, which has no security system (at present), makes itself more
and more vulnerable to theft when stacks of new fancy bar stools show up one by one in the upper levels. Club room doors are left open by construction workers, and abandoned.
York Lanes may be late with their renovations as well, but at least they submitted a detailed, visual plan of the reconstruction made available to the public. The Student Centre’s plan? A few words.
When you make no promises about what you’re going to do, we have no way of holding you to your word. The Student Centre is now half-beautiful and vulnerable to theft.
And I can truthfully report that I am served no better.
Leslie Armstrong
Editor-in-Chief
*Excalibur does not endorse the theft of Student Centre property.
