The University loves investing – just look at the £500 million extension into Heslington East. So why can’t they invest for anyone’s benefit but their own?
The University have stabbed us in the back over the summer by slashing student services when we weren’t looking. With complete disregard for our views, we’ve come back to find a barless Derwent and no 24-hour portering – two services that provided a crucial service for student welfare.
Both decisions were made without proper consultation and at a time when students could not voice their resentment. It is time the University started to appreciate and improve what it already has before getting distracted by new multi-million pound projects.
The Derwent bar debacle is the final curtain call for campus bars. Run at a loss and you’re out, no matter how important you are to the social structure – all very well if there was any investment. It is astonishing that a bar can fail to sell alcohol to students. Major bar chains would jump at the chance to locate on the doorsteps of hundreds of students, but Commercial Services just can’t seem to do it. After their recent abandonment of Halifax, Alcuin, and Langwith college bars, it is apparent that students come below profits on the University’s list of priorities.
Pro Vice Chancellor for Students Jane Grenville has argued that investment in bars is a chicken and egg situation. She wonders whether the bars should only be improved once students start using them. But the answer to her chicken and egg conundrum is simple: the university came first. No sane businessman would wait for customers before providing a decent service. Derwent has one of the fiercest college spirits, the bar being the nucleus and social hub – it’s losses represent nothing more than Commercial Services’ incompetence.
This neglect of student interests is becoming all too common: the cut backs to the portering service do not only leave students in a dangerous situation; the way the University has gone about it is deeply insulting to both students and porters. By claiming that porters have not acted as part of the student welfare system, Uni bosses have shown themselves to be totally detatched from campus life.
Infact they only seem to show an interest in us when we’re paying our fees. Bridges are left half-built, and sports facilities unsafe and inadequate. The failure to improve even basic infrastructure on Hes West whilst gallivanting forward to Hes East is growing ever more worrying.
Like shareholders in a business, students should be granted a voice – we are the ones who are paying for a most of it after all. We should not have to fight for decent facilities in a supposedly top-ten University.
YUSU are in constant battle to protect students from the University’s ravenous appetite for profits. It is students, service and spirit that hold this place together and Heslington Hall bosses should realise this.