Last April, Blueberry Hill, the latest family-run business to be eliminated by the University, closed its Keele campus doors for good. After the York University Development Corporation denied the Hill permission to renew its lease, it drew something from the student body it never intended to—attention.
Possibly for the first time since its inception, students took notice of the YUDC, and they didn’t like what they saw. Students saw another family-owned campus favourite being pushed away in favour of a chain location. Outraged, students created a petition to help the eatery stay open, managing to keep it running for an additional year. Michelangelo’s, a modest operation in the Center for Film and Theatre, followed the Hill out the door, removed in favour of a Starbucks.
As a response to student protests, the YUDC has created the Student Advisory Panel to involve them in future business decisions around and about York Lanes.
Boldly placing students in an advisory position in the corporation is a very smart move for the YUDC, as it moves bravely forward, ready to meet this year’s challenges advised by its panel of…two people.
Well, I guess three would have been a crowd.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Evan Wickham, MacLaughlin College president, and Ayala Rubin, Faculty of Health Student caucus chair, will do their best. My issue is this: the appointment is not a way for the YUDC to actually listen to students’ concerns—it’s a PR move, and a good one.
Good PR, while great for the YUDC, does little to help the student body, and Wickham and Rubin, while students, are hardly representative. How many students on campus are college presidents, or caucus chairs, with the paradigms and priorities that go along with those positions?
Even if the offices they hold are not taken into account, they are being added to a board of a dozen which represents at most 1,000 workers and at least 100 administrators. To this, a mere two students are added to represent 54,000. Their mandate? To consult on matters relating to York Lanes, which makes sense, because I can’t think of any other aspect of the YUDC’s operations students might have a stake in.
Students probably shouldn’t need to have any input in matters relating to the subway coming to campus, or the road closures it’s bringing along with it. They probably don’t need to care about the Pan Am facilities under construction on campus or what costs will be associated with them. And they certainly needn’t concern themselves with the Village, soon to be made obsolete by Pond’s Edge, an incoming residence specifically marketed to its residents, built on land soon to be made much more valuable by the arrival of the subway station. No, we ought to be concerned about York Lanes, so that’s what the YUDC’s SAP is there to monitor.
Well, at least we have students in a position to advise the YUDC. As for when they will represent us or advise them
on something that matters, your guess is as good as mine.
