Therapy dogs and yoga could become a permanent fixture at Carleton with the introduction of a new Health and Wellness Centre in mid-March.
The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) project was introduced in the budget this summer, and will begin to take form in the latter part of second semester.
“[CUSA] thought it would be cool to have a centre focused around student health and ways for students to de-stress, given that mental health and stress are big problems for students,” said Fatima Hassan, CUSA vice-president (student services).
“Students can come in if they just need a break.”
At a little over $22,400, the centre will be the least expensive CUSA-run student service centre, according to the current budget. It will only feature one co-ordinator and doesn’t have a specific programming budget.
Health and wellness “projects” are budgeted for $2,000 but Hassan said the additional programming budget—if there is any—will likely come from the budgets of the vice-presidents of student life and of student issues.
The co-ordinator who will be responsible for the centre’s programming will not be hired until after CUSA elections in January, so the centre won’t be operational until mid-March, Hassan said.
Hayley Dobson, vice-president (student issues) came up with the idea for the centre, Hassan said. They used the mental health awareness campaign—which included therapy dogs—to gauge student interest in health and mental wellness.
However, the benefit of therapy dogs and yoga is debatable, said Food Centre co-ordinator Sarah McCue.
“We haven’t been given a lot of information about what the Health and Wellness Centre is going to entail,” McCue said.
“If it’s things we’re already doing, I don’t know if we need to spend an extra $22,000 to repeat services that are already available.”
Mental wellness initiatives are not new to some service centres. Mental health programming has been a part of the GLBTQ Centre’s programming this year.
“We’re much more mental wellness-focused and more focused on creating safer spaces and more inclusive spaces, more so than we are with, say, yoga,” GLBTQ Centre co-ordinator Erica Butler said.
Mental health programming has also been a part of the Carleton Disability Awareness Centre’s mandate for years, McCue said.
With existing health, counselling and athletics services, McCue said she’s not thrilled with the new centre nor its mandate, considering the services already available to students.
Yoga instructors, therapy dogs, and peer support programming would be some of the services offered by the new Health and Wellness Centre. More specific programming would be decided by consensus from interested students.
“We want to have students come together and talk about programs, like what they can do to help each other . . . and have the centre be really student-run,” Hassan said.
In coming years, Hassan said she hopes to add a second co-ordinator and expand wellness services by adding more creative programming.
“There’s the possibility to add writing poetry, she said. “We have so many slam poets on our campus, so maybe we could use that as a way to de-stress and use other art forms.”
Hassan said with a lack of CUSA-owned space, there are not many places the centre could go. The new centre could share space with another service centre. The Aboriginal Students’ Centre and the Race, Ethnicity and Culture Hall already share space.
She said another possibility could be to move existing CUSA-owned space around to make room for the new centre, like the Clubs and Societies and Foot Patrol offices, which were both moved last year.
“Space is, one, so easily taken away from us and two, there’s not much of it to begin with,” Hassan said.
CUSA is currently in negotiations with the Carleton administration for more space on campus, she said.
“Having a health and wellness centre will bring not only healthy lifestyles to the forefront, but also student mental health.”
