The Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) is under a time crunch to begin the Arts Student Centre. This year’s AUS executives hope that they will be able to put the student fees that have been collected to their appropriate use.
There isn’t much online about the Arts Student Centre despite that it’s a project that has technically been in the works for some time. According to Tomo Yamaguchi, VP administration for the AUS, they are currently putting a big focus on “getting the students informed so that they’ll actually know about it and want to pitch in.”
There is an apparent need for student engagement since the project is still going through approval stages. All infrastructure projects at UBC go through three levels of executives and three levels of board approval — currently the Arts Student Centre has gone through the first executive level.
“The university holds the spot for us for five years and we’re three years down so we have two years to get stuff rolling,” said Yamaguchi. “We’re working on exec two right now ... I’m getting my committee together and I really want to make this work so hopefully we’ll get that done by this year.”
In September 2012, the AUS met with the dean of arts to secure support for the project. Through October and November, there was engagement as well as consultation and exec one was reached in November 2012.
Since then, the project hasn’t made much progress. Adrian Talingdan, AUS president, attributes this to the high rates of turnover with student leaders that was especially bad in recent years.
“We had a VP admin who, like last year, was there [and] resigned because it was too much work. Then we had an interim VP admin and [they] ran for VP admin, won and then decided she’s not coming back to UBC,” said Talingdan. “We had an interim VP admin for the meantime and then we had our September by-elections ... Tomo [Yamaguchi] is going to be the last VP admin.”
During all of this, student fees were still being collected for the building. A referendum was passed in February of 2013 where students agreed that they wanted and were willing to fund the Centre.
When asked whether the executive would need to refund the funds they’ve collected — which now totals over one and half million dollars — if the project didn't come together, Yamaguchi said, “That can’t be a possibility at this moment because we need to make this work.”
According to Talingdan, some of the students who had been paying their fees have actually graduated. “That would be a long process of trying to refund people. We don’t even want to picture that,” he said.
Michael Kingsmill, designer for the AMS, said "these buildings take about a year and a half to build."
Gerald Vanderwoude, assistant dean of facilities and human resources in the Faculty of Arts, has been assisting with the project in a support capacity and says he is “optimistic” that the project will come together.
"There's a great amount of work that is ready to go. It is really just about … putting the ball over the goal line ... and that requires effort,” said Vanderwoude. “From a funding and a donor point of view, there’s probably great potential there, but it will require all the arts students to be committed to it ... there’s nothing as strong as your voices.”
Donors make up half of how the $5 million building will be funded. According to Yamaguchi, they will receive a $2 million payment from student fees, which will bring them up to where the AUS needs be as the halfway mark.
When asked what the impetus was for collecting the fees beforehand, Yamaguchi said, “It looks better to the Board if we have everything backed up already.”
According to Vanderwoude, it's still too early in the process to tell if the project is in good shape in terms of donations since the executive rounds need to be passed first.
The three stages of board approval will be the next obstacle to tackle after the executive rounds are done. At this point, there isn’t an expected timeline as to when the Board levels will be reached, but being done exec two before the end of the school year is a definite possibility.
According to Talingdan, however quickly they move through the stages of board approval will depend on how much they get done during the intervals between the meetings. UBC’s Board of Governors only meets five times a year.
“You have that time frame between each meeting, but if you ... miss one, then you have to move onto the next one,” said Talingdan. “[It] really depends on how much work we get done leading up to those meetings to ensure that we finish it within that time frame.”
The next board meeting is scheduled for December 3. Ultimately, the hope is that the Arts Student Centre will bring together one of the largest and most spread out faculties on campus.
"It’s very difficult to be a young undergraduate student and say, 'Where do I speak from?'" noted Vanderwoude. "In my mind, [the building] makes a lot of sense."
Kingsmill said one of the biggest components of the building is a public assembly space where there can be common congregation. Kingsmill and the AUS will be putting out an expression of interest to architectural firms but it is to early too do so.
This article was updated on November 6 to add comments from Kingsmill.