NOT A LACK OF SPACE – A LACK OF ACCESS: STUDENTS SPEAK OUT
Campus space is becoming hard for students to access. Societies can’t get rooms, complaints are brushed off, and whole buildings are being closed or left unused with barely any communication. Meanwhile, the University keeps blocking out rooms “just in case” there’s a conference, even when nothing’s actually happening.
Student groups feel pushed aside, and there’s real worry access to major spaces like theatres could be lost. It’s not that the campus lacks space — it’s that students can’t get to it. For a campus university, it’s starting to feel like the campus isn’t really for students anymore.
There have been widespread booking issues for societies: one student, who wanted to remain anonymous, said:
“Initially we were informed of ‘a clash with important departmental bookings’, despite there not being a clash when bookings were made, so effectively our bookings had been overridden.”
Occurrences like these give the impression that students and societies are being deprioritised.
Between King’s Manor being handed over to York St John in June 2025, and Wentworth College Nucleus being mothballed due to high operation costs, some students have experienced poor communication regarding the spaces available.
Another student commented: “The responses typically did not provide a very clear timeline for confirmation, and we were advised to ‘wait for processing,’ and ‘the result will be out at the end of this week’ (but does not come out in reality) or to ‘try alternative rooms/times,’ we did not see their support.” The University often blocks rooms for potential income-generating events, even when no event is actually scheduled – leaving students feeling neglected and deprioritised.
If the University continues to focus on income-generating opportunities, there is a real risk of losing the dynamism that students bring to campus spaces. There is plenty of space available to account for the entire student body on campus. The issue is gaining the opportunity and permission to use these spaces. It seems that the main prerogative is for these spaces to sit idle, gathering dust until they serve the purpose of making money.
Despite being a campus university, it arguably no longer feels like a campus for its students. Staff may not realise how rich and active the student social life is after working hours, and how much it relies on accessible spaces.
The Campus Space Campaign launched last month to push the University to prioritise student access to campus space, and to encourage societies to make noise about their difficulties booking campus space. Hopefully the rich student community at York can pull together to tackle this issue — we must protect our campus social scene!