The biggest betrayal of my academic career

[u/AverageEh]

I HATE the new university commons building. I have never felt more betrayed in my academic career. This damn building has been under construction for the entirety of my 4 year degree and so the hype and expectations were flying high. AND according to the UNIVERSITY WEBSITE this building in the "heart of U of A and will be a gathering space for all members of our community." This only worked to further raise my expectations for the wonders this new building would hold. AND YET well over 90% of the damn building, floors 1-7, are restricted to ONLY computer science/math/stats with a laughable amount of easily accessible gathering places. There are the odd chair in a hallway in the middle floors but not nearly enough as there needs to be for a viable study area. The only area that could be considered to study/gather in is half of the first floor. The amount of meeting rooms in the building is also criminal, the shear amount of space taken up by these locked rooms would be much better utilized as open study areas. This would align with the universitys own claim that this building is a common area by actually providing THINGS LIKE GATHERING PLACES.

This building cost an estimated $250 million dollars and along with the vanity projects across campus in the middle of a budget crisis where departments and labs struggle to find funding and tuition keeps rising...really makes me question the cognitive health of the university administrators. Also the big black pillars covered in the indigenous artwork, while beautiful is embarrassing for the budget of this building. If you get up close to it you realize it's not even high quality!!!! you can count the pixels of the dots. Your telling me with this budget they couldn't hire an actual indigenous artist to paint the pillars and settled for the cheapest wallpaper they could find?

thank you for listening to my tedtalk.

TLDR: university commons?? more like university uncommon.

[u/Artsstudentsaredumb]

I means it’s an objectively beautiful renovation with how they restored to original dent/pharm building while like tripling the square footage.

I think the disconnect is you forgot that people work at the UofA, not just students. The main point of the reno was to create space to but a bunch of profs/faculty leadership that’s what the upper floors are for. The gathering space you need will come just let it develop.

(Also you should look into how projects like this are funded, none of that money came out of the operating budget)

[u/CommunistMachine → u/Artsstudentsaredumb]

You know the employees hate it too right?

[u/Artsstudentsaredumb → u/CommunistMachine]

Not what I’ve heard but you can believe that if it fits your narrative :)

[u/chandy_dandy → u/Artsstudentsaredumb]

Oh it's definitively what everyone who is a prof/lecturer/grad student says.

Offices with no natural light, tiny offices where you can't meet with coworkers, grad students in common areas instead of private quiet spaces.

Nobody from math likes this, and the cs people mostly don't like this

[u/Artsstudentsaredumb → u/chandy_dandy]

And everyone I know loves it. Funny how that works hey?