Students being taken for ride?
Two $50,000 playground slides over stairs seen by some as a waste of fees
Two $25,000 slides are part of the bill for UBC’S new Student Union Building, leading some students to question if their money is being well spent.
The Alma Mater Society, UBC’S student union, has conditionally approved the two slides for the $105-million building. One would take students from the fourth to the third floor, and one from the third to the second.
But not all students are happy with a portion of their fees slipping into slides.
“You can do it if you’re Google and you’ve got a bunch of money to throw around. But honestly, I’d rather see the money I’m putting into this school go to my education and not a playground for oversized children,” said Gabriel Lechner, a first-year arts student.
“There’s no point in putting slides in a building, it’s almost making the building a child’s plaything,” added Sari Rosove, a fourth-year student who works for the AMS.
“Sure, it’s a slide, it looks pretty, but how does it benefit students?”
But Caroline Wong, AMS vicepresident administration and the chair of the New SUB committee, hopes the slides provide an amusing diversion from the rigours of university.
“Students have said they wanted something playful, something in the SUB where they could take a break from their studies,” she said.
She also urged students to look at slides in the context of the larger project.
“When you look at it in a personal way, $50,000 is a lot, but when you think of the $105 million price tag, it’s less than .0005 per cent of the total cost.
“General student feedback has been ‘yes, if everything else is taken care of, if we’re on budget, we want a slide’.”
In 2008, students voted to pay $80 million through a 40-year student fee to replace the current Student Union Building, which opened in 1968. It will include a pub, brewery, food court, atrium and spaces for clubs. The AMS hopes it will be the most sustainable student union building in North America.
Construction is slated to begin later this year, opening in time for the 2014-2015 school year.
Ross Horton, the general manager of the SUB, believes future students will get a kick out of the alternative form of transportation.
“Everybody kind of likes the idea. Even if you’re 20 years old, you still get the same rush of going down a slide as you did when you were a kid.”