Visitors to Sidney Smith Hall this week will notice that the Second Cup has expanded its operations, consequently eliminating nearly half of the student space in one of U of T’s most frequented buildings.
Without any student input, the hall has been transformed from a student-oriented space into one that is corporate-dominated, thanks to the new, giant L-shape formed by the Second Cup expansion and the ever-present U of T MasterCard table.
We at the Arts and Science Students’ Union (ASSU) were never consulted, even though we are based out of Sidney Smith, often use the hall for tabling and events, and are the official representatives of over 23,000 students enrolled in Arts and Science. In fact, we only learned about the construction after it began.
Soon after construction started, the Association of Political Science Students (APSS) informed us that without any notice, they were forced to shut down their office in Sidney Smith for over a week so that construction workers could access water mains.
During orientation week, ASSU contacted Monica Contreras, the Assistant Dean responsible for planning, and requested a copy of the plans. On September 10, we received the design drawings which showed that the plans had existed at least since August 2006, but no one in the administration had seen it fit to notify students.
Sidney Smith is one of the best outreach locations on campus, and now nearly half of it is being turned over to a corporation. In past years, we’ve held our annual “ASSU Day” in Sid Smith, with almost 40 course unions in attendance. Space was tight before, but staging it in Sidney Smith may now be impossible. Of course, many more student groups will also be affected.
Corporations have too much of a presence on U of T’s campus. ASSU believes that corporations should not provide our student services. In terms of food, we should be building upon the incredible success stories of the student-run, fairtrade Human Bean in Old Vic, and the gourmet, cheap, and mostly local and organic vegan food made by the Hot Yam out of the International Student Centre.
These are the types of initiatives— not well-established and highly profitable corporations— that need support from the university. And if the administration had asked for student input, they would have known this already.
Instead, in this climate of federal and provincial under-funding for post-secondary education, we have seen corporatization and private profit become the driving force at the University of Toronto. Corporatization has restructured research, education, services, and the physical space of the university according to profit-driven business models.
Academic freedom and integrity are being threatened by the school’s increasing dependence on private donors and the prioritization of research and education that tie into corporate and commercial needs.
We see hints of corporatization at the University of Toronto when honorary PhDs are bestowed upon the most generous donors, such as billionaire Michael Lee Chin last year.
Our own school president, David Naylor, is corporatization’s most vocal advocate and makes no attempts to hide his agenda. In May, Naylor delivered the keynote address at a $200-per-person conference on “Commercializing University Research”. Now, Naylor is peddling his Towards 2030 vision, a neoliberal plan that calls for the commercialization of research and the deregulation of all tuition fees.
As students, faculty, staff, and community members, we must denounce the Second Cup’s takeover of student space, but we must also organize together against the broader issues of corporatization, or we will soon be facing much worse.
ASSU is holding an open meeting to discuss corporatization on Friday September 28th in Sidney Smith 1074 from 3-5pm.
