Langara student club’s find booking rooms to be a challenge

Reported by Agazy Mengesha

As the student population at Langara grows, some clubs are complaining of being unable to find space for club meetings and events.

Clubs have reported that a lack of meeting spaces at Langara, along with communication issues, has caused them to move off-campus or even shut down the club entirely.

Rosi Hunter was the head of the Langara Yoga Club, which she founded in 2015, but was forced to disband it last term because she couldn’t find any places to meet.

“I spent days wandering around campus looking for suitable rooms and asking the [Office of Student Engagement] if we could book them,” Hunter said in an email to The Voice. “Most of the time they weren’t even booked – we just weren’t allowed to hold yoga classes there […] or else we just weren’t allowed to have yoga in that space at all.”

Ahmed Elsayed, president of the Langara Muslim Students Association, said a lack of communication was the biggest issue the club faced when trying to book space for an event.

“They just kept procrastinating the email,” Elsayed said. “They could’ve been a little more comprehensive with their replies, rather than simply replying ‘we’ll get into it’ or ‘we’ll look into it’.”

Elsayed said that going in person to book a room simplified the process.

Reba Noel, Coordinator of Student Engagement Programs, says she realizes the booking process can be frustrating.

“You get a lot of calls and a lot of emails, and we’re all trying our best to respond to them, but sometimes there is certainly a definite benefit to coming in, ” Noel said. “We don’t have a lot of available space. Instruction takes priority when it comes to the classroom space and many of the other spaces, it’s a little bit like first-come first-served.”