Moving the Laurentian Association of Mature and Part-Time Students (LAMPS) association office from the “bowling alley” area in the school’s classroom building to the second floor of the Parker Building would be bad for students, says the association’s president.
University administration wants LAMPS to vacate the space to make way for the university advancement office, says Richard Paquette. He says his association is being asked to move into a much smaller space because there is a shortage of space on campus.
“I hope we won’t have to move because it won’t be good for students,” says Paquette, a part-time student who will graduate with a degree in history this spring.
“What we’re trying to promote now is instead of moving front-line services off the front line, let’s move more services on the front line.”
Dr. Susan Silverton, vice-president of academic affairs, and Denis Mayer, associate vice-president of student affairs, will attend a LAMPS meeting tomorrow to discuss the situation with the students.
Paquette says Mayer informed him Jan. 16 his association would have to move, although no details were given at that time.
He says he made an appointment with Silverton, and was told Jan. 30 he needed to vacate part of the office within two weeks and the entire LAMPS operation would have to move to the Parker Building by the end of the month.
A day later, the LAMPS council voted not to move and consulted a lawyer. Paquette says the university is holding off on making them move for now, but he’s not sure what will happen.
The man says many of his members are in wheelchairs and would find it hard to get the new allotted space in the Parker Building.
He says many of his members attend school year-round and the area where they’d have to move is “a ghost town” during the summer session, as opposed to the busy bowling alley area where the LAMPS office is now.
The association also recently renovated one of its offices as a room for kids to play in, and celebrated its grand opening Feb. 14, says Paquette. Many LAMPS members are mature students with children, he says.
“It’s an open room and has curtains for privacy. It now has a leather chair either for a mother to use as a breastfeeding station or for a student to study,” says Paquette, who has two young sons himself.
“The floor has got mats on it for kids to roll around, jump around or do whatever they want. There’s a television in there and we have purchased a number of DVDs that would be entertaining for kids. The purpose is facilitating access for child care providers.”
Administration is not thrilled with the new child-friendly space because LAMPS didn’t consult with the university’s “risk management” experts first, he says. But children should not be considered a “risk” by administration, says Paquette.
The kids’ room could only be re-created in the new space the university wants LAMPS to move into if the association didn’t set up an administration office, he says.
In an earlier interview, Silverton said the association is being asked to move because of the space shortage at Laurentian. LAMPS is being re-located to the Parker Building because it would be near the other student associations, she said.
“What we’ve been doing over the last (18 months) has been developing more efficient space planning,” she says.
“We’re trying to get some economies of space by putting functions together rather than having them spread all over.
We will have all the student associations in one location in a building students built with their own fees funding. We wanted to re-locate the part-time students close to that area.”
She says the kids’ room is “a separate issue,” but the association should have consulted with the university’s risk-management experts about the space before setting it up. She says the kids’ room is “outside of regulations.”
