So I run a student led makerspace at my university. We have a really nice room in the Engineering center right next to the main entrance and library with huge windows facing a busy thoroughfare. A few months ago the College of Engineering approached us and told us they’d like our space, and offered us an alternative space to move into. They told us if we didn’t want to move they wouldn’t make us. We looked at the alternate space and it was a shit basement tucked underneath a lab building. We told them to fuck off (unfortunately not in those words) and they did.
Now it’s Summer break and nobody is in town (I’m in Peru right now). Just two weeks ago they give us the exact same proposal as last time and ask us to revote on moving. It’s a unanimous no. Then, when we tell them no for the second time, they respond by telling us that we have to move anyway, and the only thing we voted no on was getting the alternative space. They’re still half offering the alternative space but it doesn’t even remotely fit our needs. Oh and they want us out by August.
Our best bet right now is we found another makerspace being established by a library and they can’t get it off the ground. We’re suggesting that they give us their space and in return we make their makerspace happen. Their space is next to a massive wall of windows with a beautiful courtyard. The catch is the courtyard is entirely walled off by hedges from the rest of the world and the only doors to it are emergency exits…they don’t want to open up the courtyard and/or doors because people are supposed to check ID at the main entrance before entering the building. So there’s this beautiful courtyard right next to a major thouroughfare on campus that is totally dead and is killing the potential for a functioning makerspace because the room is attached to a ID check only library???
If we can’t make the library location not shit we’re going to try and dig our feet in and refuse to move at the current location but I don’t see much happening there. The whole thing is fucking insulting though, from the asking us to vote while not telling us exactly what we were voting on to offering us a garbage location and then acting surprised when we don’t want it. Not to mention they had months between the first time they brought this up and now to tell us that they would force us out, but they instead waited until summer break when almost no one is available to contest the issue/found an alternate location.
Plus, the thing they’re moving us for is outreach to highschool students, ie university marketing. They’re sacrificing already incredibly thin student resources in order to secure more students…
I guess all this isn’t super important because I just graduated but myself and a couple other students built this space up and don’t want to see it get gutted and its resources cannibalized just because the university wants more marketing.
