Students need more than the SLC

By Mohamed Omar
Editor-In-Chief

If I could somehow pick out the most reported news topic to ever grace the fine pages of The Eyeopener, it would no doubt be drugs alcohol the lack of student space on campus.

Take a social media stroll and look up “Ryerson” on Twitter. One of the most common complaints is that there is literally not enough space to just sit down and study.

Students frequently describe finding an area to use as a battle or mission – and finding a space with power outlets is a whole other issue.

Ryerson isn’t stupid, and it knows that the painful lack of space is affecting the lifestyle of its students. The Student Learning Centre (SLC) at the corner of Yonge and Gould streets hopes to directly tackle that problem.

The SLC, slated to be completed by Winter 2015 and be fully functional by Fall 2015, won’t have any classrooms. Instead, it aims to provide students “with an outstanding environment to study, collaborate and discover,” according to Ryerson’s website.

The building will no doubt offer more student space, but not everyone is going to get a piece of that sweet spatial pie.

As the school adds new programs and its enrolment figures continue to rise, as well as the Ryerson Theatre School having to move out at the end of the academic year, the issue of space will continue to plague the student experience at Ryerson.

The SLC, regardless of its architectural glory, will only alleviate the issue of student space, rather than deal it a crushing blow, and the school’s physical growth is not keeping up with its expansionist attitude – no matter how much city-building it may be provide.

Now, I am in no way fit – physically and intellectually – to develop a plan to create more student space on campus, but if the school’s construction of the SLC, the Church Street Development and at least two projects on Jarvis Street intends to create more residential, academic and entrepreneurial zones on campus, then Ryerson should be figuring out how to add common student space with the buildings it already has.