The Graduate Students’ Association’s (GSA) plan to close Mike’s Place and replace it with a community hub has been met with stiff opposition from graduate students who say association executives have not been accountable or transparent enough about the proposal.
The proposed community hub would repurpose Mike’s Place as a space for graduate students to research and organize campus groups. GSA president Namrata Tilokani said it would also serve as a social space with food pop-ups and local vendors.
Mike’s Place, an on-campus pub run by the GSA, has been operating at a loss since 2015. The pub is projected to lose upwards of $200,000 between May 2020 and April 2021, according to Tilokani.
“This is student money,” Tilokani said. “This is getting to the point of financial instability … If it continues, I think we all worry about the sustainability of the student union.”
But some graduate students say the financial state of Mike’s Place is not as dire as GSA executives depict.
The pub, closed since March 2020 because of the pandemic, suffered additional losses from COVID-19 that it does not normally experience, according to Nicole Lee, a GSA councillor.
Lee worked at Mike’s Place until pub staff were laid off in September.
“March and April are typically two very high-earning months,” Lee said. “When you go into the documents to try to look and see how [the losses were] constructed, it falls apart very quickly.”
“Where was the fight?” Lecoq said. “Where was beating the war drum? Where was getting the membership to kind of try to stand up [for Mike’s Place]?”
The GSA petitioned Carleton for rent relief, but the university “did not agree to help in this regard,” according to a Feb. 23 email sent by GSA vice-president (finance) Hemant Gupta to councillors and obtained by the Charlatan.
In the email, Gupta also said the GSA is looking to apply for wage and rent subsidies from the government but may not qualify.
While Mike’s Place has run a deficit of over $30,000 each year since 2018, Lee said these losses are acceptable because the pub is a service and should not be expected to make money.
“With an operating budget of about $1.2 million, a loss of a couple thousand dollars doesn’t seem like a big issue for all the good things and the social space that Mike’s Place provides,” Lee said.
Tilokani said while the losses of Mike’s Place were exacerbated by the pandemic, its financials were unstable beforehand.
“This is student money. This is getting to the point of financial instability … If it continues, I think we all worry about the sustainability of the student union.”
She said the GSA has experimented in the past with different hours, menu items and prices to shrink the losses, but that those measures haven’t worked.
“The losses are unpredictable and they’re almost doubling every year,” Tilokani said. “It’s been quite a number of years that it was losing money and it just kind of snowballed.”
Members of the Save Mike’s Place campaign also said the unilateral decision to close the pub violated the GSA’s constitution and bylaws.
GSA executives have now walked back their decision to move forward without the consultation of council. In a March 15 email to the Charlatan, Tilokani said the executives “have every intention of ensuring that the decisions we make … will be voted on by council.”
Bylaws—including bylaw 9.1a, which stipulates “the GSA operates a student pub, hereinafter entitled Mike’s Place”—can only be amended by a two-thirds vote by council at two consecutive council meetings.
“It is inappropriate for the [e]xecutive to make sweeping decisions … without engaging and consulting with the current membership,” a document from the Save Mike’s Place campaign reads.
At that meeting, vice-president (external) Harar Hall said the decision would not be voted on by council because “we don’t know if we can take the financial risk” of a motion to close Mike’s Place not passing.
After a petition from Mike’s Place staff and graduate students received over 1,700 signatures, GSA council voted to keep the pub open with reduced hours.Council has previously blocked plans to close Mike’s Place. In April 2019, the GSA announced plans to lay off 16 pub employees and close the pub over the summer because of the Student Choice Initiative, which GSA executives feared would decrease the association’s funding.
“Last time the council voted on [closing Mike’s Place], they didn’t pass it and now we’re $200,000 in debt,” Hall said. “We don’t know if we can continue to make that decision.”
Hall later added that a decision to close Mike’s Place would fall under the administrative duties of the executive, not the legislative duties of council.
“Where was the fight? Where was beating the war drum? Where was getting the membership to kind of try to stand up [for Mike’s Place]?”
Lecoq said council and students need to understand the pub’s financial situation before a decision is made.
“It’s not that we’re being obstinate or burying our heads in the sand [on the financials],” he said. “It’s just the information to justify such huge change … hasn’t really been laid out for us yet.”
Tilokani said the presentation to council was only a proposal, not a formal decision.
“It was really a place to start a conversation to say, Mike’s Place is not sustainable right now and it can’t continue as is, because what it is right now is a pub that’s losing a lot of money,” Tilokani said.
Lee said in an email to the Charlatan that the proposal “made clear … that maintaining [Mike’s Place] as a student pub was not an option that the exec was considering.”
A consultation process on the proposal to replace Mike’s Place with a community hub is ongoing. A series of departmental consultations were held in February.
Lee said a survey to gauge graduate students’ opinions on the proposal is problematic because “it seems all tailored to have a predetermined outcome of Mike’s Place no longer existing.”
Tilokani said the survey will be rereleased to address those concerns.
“It’s not that we’re being obstinate or burying our heads in the sand. It’s just the information to justify such huge change … hasn’t really been laid out for us yet.”
According to Lecoq, the proposed community hub would not offer any new services to students. The grad lounge, located in University Centre, is run by the GSA and already provides what the community hub would, Lecoq said.
Lecoq also said the community hub would not solve any of Mike’s Place’s financial problems, as the hub would not bring in revenue.
The GSA council has struck a committee to review Mike’s Place’s financials and create a strategic plan to address concerns.
While Tilokani said she did not know when a decision on the pub’s future would be made, Lee said a decision would not be made before May 1, when a new executive takes over. A final decision could be made in fall 2021.
