By Saleem W. Khan
Only two weeks after his election victory, the RSU president-elect is backing down from his opposition to the proposed campus centre.
I”ve said all along, Paul Cheevers isn’t absolutely against the campus centre,” Cheevers says. “If we had a surplus here of a few million dollars, we could start building the campus centre.”
This would seem to contradict statements made in a pre-election interview, when Cheevers said, “I am definitely opposed to a student centre.”
The new president’s main complaints at the time were the questionable motives behind building the centre.
“The RSU hacks presently are looking for nicer offices, a glorified cafeteria and another student bar,” he said.
Cheevers was also suspicious of Ryerson’s administration’s reasons for backing the project.
“I think that the administration has jumped onto the student centre idea because they want to push out the RSU offices (and) the Copyrite. They want the space.”
Cheevers admits that he did not do any “really formal” research into the campus centre issue.
“I talked to (RSU) president Mike D’Angelo a little bit about it, to (Ryerson Centre vice-president) Bob Crane about it, and then just in my dealings in the past.”
Cheevers said he met with RSU president Mike D’Angelo and last year’s president Bob Crane to discuss the campus centre in the first week of January, before the elections. D’Angelo is a director of the Ryerson Centre, a group charged with maintaining buildings on campus for students, staff, faculty and alumni activities.”
“Bob knew I was running (for RSU president) around Christmas time,” Cheevers said. “He said ‘Before you make all your decisions on the campus centre, we should have a frank and thorough discussion about it.'”
Cheevers said he spoke with D’Angelo and Crane, but “we kept getting sidetracked and it wasn’t a very good meeting.”
As RSU president, Cheevers says he will be “stressing we get all the information and accurate information about the student centre” out to the students. This hasn’t happened because campus centre committee members “want to say the positives but they don’t want to express the negatives.”
Crane says this isn’t the case. One of the things he worked toward during his term as president was to make the student centre “more inclusive.”
The RSU accomplished this by approaching Oakham House, the Ryerson Centre, CKLN, The Eyeopener, and CESAR (Continuing Education Students’ Association of Ryerson) to suggest involvement in the Campus Centre Committee, Crane said.
“We have all those people sitting on the committee, so it is no longer just a student union activity. Everyone is involved,” he said.
“Even Paul (Cheevers)—who says he’s not in favor of the campus centre—is in favor of the referendum. He still wants students to decide whether they want a campus centre.”
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