A Carleton student is speaking out about a lack of study space on campus after her complaint over the Centre for Student Academic Support’s (CSAS) newly-reserved seating in MacOdrum Library fell on deaf ears.
Katie Shieck, a second-year criminology student, said she noticed CSAS had reserved a fourth-floor seating area in September that used to be open for all students to use. But it didn’t begin to bother her until seating became hard to come by during midterm season in mid-October, she said.
“Students are always looking for places to sit and work on the fourth floor, and this area has 17 tables that students cannot use during most of the day, even though they are not being used in this academic area,” Shieck said via email. She added she shared this statement with the library’s online feedback forum.
CSAS became part of the Student Academic Support Centre (SASC) this summer and offers writing, skill development and peer study programs like Peer Assisted Study Sessions from its office on the fourth floor of the library, according to their website.
Dotty Nwakanma, the manager of CSAS, said the centre has seen an increase in student visits after it adopted a “drop-in model” this fall, which allows students to use the centre’s services without booking an appointment.
She said roughly 16 tables are now reserved for walk-in support during operating hours from Monday to Friday. Nwakanma said the centre needs to have reserved seating in order to accommodate “high demand” during peak periods.
Shieck, however, said this makes things difficult because of the library’s low number of seats available.
“[The reserved area] makes me angry because the library overall doesn’t have that much seating . . . It’s just not fair that [CSAS] has so many seats while people are struggling to find places to study all over campus,” Shieck said.
After not getting a response from library staff, Shieck said she shared her complaint with her sorority, Phi Sigma Sigma, on Facebook and the post quickly garnered support. She said over 20 of her sisters re-sent the complaint to the library, but she said they received only one response in total.
“[The email] pretty much just said, ‘We’re sorry. We’ll look into it.’ They didn’t really justify anything,” Shieck said.
Wayne Jones, the university librarian, said the library has received complaints about CSAS’s use of space. He said he believes the complaint was replied to.
Jones estimated the library can currently seat about 2,000 students, but said the use of space continues to be a common concern.
“[Seating] is a major focus. All the renovations we’ve done [have] basically been circled around providing more seating for students,” Jones said. “It’s one of those cases where as much as we provide, there’s more traffic in than we can possibly accommodate.”
Nwakanma said she is open to sharing the space if students are unhappy with how it is being used, but has not received any complaints.
“It would be a matter of possibly maybe negotiating something with the library, and seeing if we can let students use the space for some period of time with the understanding that once we start getting the services being needed we would need to take back our space,” she said.
Nwakanma said she is meeting with a representative from the library on Oct. 20 to discuss changes to the space, such as allowing students to use extra seating when the centre is not using it.
“When all is said and done, what we want is the same thing . . . to make sure that students are making use of the space,” Nwakanma said.
