New office resources for student groups, including mailboxes,
lockers and communal office space in Kerckhoff Hall, are in the
works but will not be available for use until the student
government approves guidelines, which has been postponed several
times this quarter.
The communal office space, in the room formerly occupied by the
Associated Students UCLA library, held an official opening in
January, though no usage guidelines or application for use have
been approved by the Undergraduate Students Association
Council.
Approximately 30 mailboxes will be housed in the communal
workspace, and lockers for storage are planned be built in the
Student Activities Center.
In addition to establishing usage guidelines and eligibility for
use of these new resources, the guidelines are also expected to
outline a new process by which office space will be given out and
its use evaluated.
Office space for student groups in Kerckhoff Hall was last
allocated in 1996, and there has been no formation of an office
space allocation committee during the past five years, said USAC
Facilities Commissioner Joe Vardner, who sits on the
council’s office space allocation committee.
This means it has been years since there has been oversight of
the use of office space, or even monitoring of whether or not
groups in possession of offices are still active student groups.
Many student groups with space currently share their office with
one or more other groups.
Kerckhoff office space is a main topic of discussion for the
committee. There are approximately 25 offices available for over 50
USAC and USAC-sponsored groups.
Members of the committee, who are all elected members of student
government, said the delay of a concrete draft of allocation
guidelines is due to the lack of any useful precedent, since
guidelines have not been updated in 10 years.
The committee’s guidelines will determine office resource
allocations for student groups based on set criteria, which range
from the quality of a group’s programming and academic
opportunities to its service to the UCLA community.
“We don’t want to make changes that are hasty. We
have a very limited amount of space and want to make sure the
guidelines are most appropriate to the small amount of
space,” USAC President Jenny Wood said.
Approval of office space allocation guidelines has been a USAC
agenda item since Jan. 17, but councilmembers voted to postpone the
vote until fourth week, and it has since been postponed for two
more weeks.
Both Wood and USAC Community Service Commissioner Farheen Malik,
who sit on the committee, insist there are no major problems within
the committee that have caused the delay, only the need to produce
a beneficial set of guidelines.
“We want the guidelines to be something that is easy to
understand and practical,” Wood said.
She also said the committee hopes student groups will be able to
apply for office space, mailboxes and lockers using only one
application.
Drafting a final application has taken the committee so long
because it is important to “create a system that is objective
and allows for evaluation,” Wood said.
Criteria are still being formed and decisions still need to be
made concerning the amount of time a student group will be
allocated an office between reviews, Vardner said.
While in recent years there has been no turnover or oversight of
space usage, under new guidelines groups that become less active
than competing groups would be at risk of losing their office
space.
The new allocation guidelines and criteria would ensure that
groups that benefit students the most would receive offices and
become permanent fixtures on the UCLA campus, Vardner said.
“The whole point of a student group having an office is
for stability,” he said.
The committee hopes to present the finished guidelines to USAC
at their Feb. 14 meeting, so current councilmembers can visualize
how the guidelines work when put into practice, Malik said.
USAC needs to approve the final allocation guidelines before
they can take effect. Once the guidelines are approved, the
committee can allocate the mailboxes and lockers, but office space
will not be evaluated and reallocated until the next academic
year.
“The new allocations will be successful because
we’re not just going to make sure the best groups have an
office, but we are giving more resources,” Vardner said.
“It will be easier for student leaders to lead
groups.”