<strong>By <a href=”http://159.203.128.194/tag/benedict-reiners”>Benedict Reiners</a></strong>
Site encourages staff and students to upload evidence of SFU’s deterioration
The SFU Graduate Student Society (GSS) recently started a contest, which encourages students to show the signs of the deterioration of SFU’s buildings. This contest, which students and staff can enter by submitting pictures of damages and deteriorations of any of the SFU campuses to the campaign’s tumblr, “I [heart] SFU”, aims to bring attention to the state of the campus buildings in order to pressure increased funding towards repair and renovation projects, as well as other building projects, such as seismic upgrades for buildings like the Bennett Library.
When questioned about the current status of SFU’s buildings, GSS advocate Christina Batstone stated that “at this point in time, SFU has assessed 53 per cent of their buildings as being in poor condition, with another 27 per cent in fair condition.” She added further that such figures excluded both roadways and other utilities. These categorizations are determined under the Facility Condition Index, a system that rates buildings on the proportion of the components that have reached the ends of their useful lives, as measured by cost. Under this categorization, something is categorized as “poor” after 50 per cent of its components have reached the ends of their useful lives. In addition to this, “fair” covers anything that has anywhere from 20 per cent to 50 per cent of its components past their useful lives.
The contest started accepting pictures on January 1, and will continue to accept submissions up until February 29, with the main prizes being drawn on March 14. Submissions are to be submitted to the “I [heart] SFU” tumblr.
“The buildings are in a constant state of repair and maintenance, but there has not been a time when so many buildings needed urgent care all at once,” said Batstone, citing the fact that as most of the buildings are roughly the same age, they are requiring maintenance at the same rate, which is overwhelming the limited resources available.
This constant costs required to maintain the buildings has lead to their neglect, with not only limited funds from the university, but also the federal and provincial governments. However, the GSS warns of the risks of doing so, pointing out the fact that the costs will need to be incurred eventually, and can only be put of for a finite amount of time. This is supported by SFU’s capital plan regarding the matter, published in April of 2015. This document states that if the issue were to be ignored for excessive amounts of time, university operations would become “impaired.” However, the extent of possible impairments is not yet known.
Though despite the fact that the full extent of possible damages and their respective impacts on students cannot be known in advance, the GSS insists that students can expect to bear some of the financial burden, so long as the provincial and federal governments don’t step in to help. “Students may see their fees increasing or additional levies,” stated Batstone, who also indicated that such increases in costs would likely be passed on to students apart from tuition, due to fixed increases which restrict it.
However, currently, the university is working with the provincial government towards finding a plan to address the deteriorating state of the campus. “The university is working closely with the Ministry of Advanced Education on the need to plan for the renewal of our older buildings,” said Larry Waddell, director of facilities development at SFU’s Burnaby campus, stating that it was these efforts that brought about the renovations to the Shrum Science Chemistry building, completed last year.
Despite the completion of such a project, GSS also encouraged students to get further involved in the matter, citing the significant amounts of work still to be done. They suggested efforts focused on the public awareness towards the issue, with the GSS providing recommendations for writing letters to local members of parliament and MLAs, or opinion pieces for regional newspapers. In addition to this, they once again encourage students to participate in their campaign, which “is open to all members of the SFU community and is a really easy way to support our efforts to address this issue.”
