Readers of the other newspaper on campus, Imprint, will undoubtedly have read the news that Imprint Publications may be looking for a new office space for next fall. On the front page of their most recent issue was displayed the most exciting of headlines: “Feds to evict Imprint after 37 years”.
The article goes on to say that Feds terminated the lease at the end of winter term and informed them on May 1. According to a Feds blog post, the Imprint’s lease first ran out on April 1, 2007 and has been automatically renewed each year under the same conditions. This year, Feds want to renegotiate.
Both the Imprint article and the Feds blog agree that Imprint has three main options: stay where they are under a new lease for twice the rent, move to a new location in the SLC that has “…just over half of [Imprint’s] current space,” or move out of the SLC. According to Imprint, it was mentioned by a Feds director that the space, should Imprint vacate it, might be turned into office space. According to Jesse McGinnis, Imprint’s board chair, this is a proposal that “…is unsettling to say the least.” Imprint went further, suggesting that the decision might not be a business one. According to McGinnis, the “ I can only conclude it’s personal, and in response to how Imprint has covered issues… [that] cast a bad light on Feds.” Imprint’s article continues this line of accusation, quoting Ryan Macfarlane, executive of the Canadian University Press, as saying that student unions and student media are “typically at odds with one another.”
From the Feds official perspective, it is all business. The Imprint’s lease was up, and Feds isn’t sure that Imprint is the best use for the space. They claim that “…cost of the space to the Federation of Students is higher than the amount paid by Imprint.” This, as Feds sees it, is a subsidy of sorts; students already pay Imprint fees, so Feds should not “spend students’ money from the Feds fee on a separate organization…”
Beyond that, Feds also has the 2014 SLC Space Audit to back them up. In this survey of Waterloo Students, it was found that Imprint was one of the services that students ranked in the lowest category of the “Reasons for Accessing the SLC”. There are some caveats to this, however. Most of the 38 services in the study were ranked in this lowest category, including CIBC, International News, and “Feds Offices Use”. The only service with a median ranking of 4 out of 5 was Tim Horton’s.
This debate has the potential to raise a number of issues about student governance in the University of Waterloo. For instance, does Feds need the amount of office space it has, or would it be better to fill the SLC with rent-paying services that students might enjoy more? What should the SLC and other student spaces on campus be used for? Should it only contain those services that are useful for all, or should it be a place where all student activity is centred, no matter how niche? These are not questions that will be answered when Imprint decides what to do, or when Feds decides to use any newfound space they get. But they are questions that are fairly pressing for the often space-strapped student body and student clubs.
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