I'm frustrated and sad on behalf of my cohort back at the University of Saskatchewan.
In the last year, we have lost our English grad student room due to a reshuffling of offices in the Arts tower to provide room for an "administrative commons" following sharp cuts to the Arts and University budget. This room was important for grad students, particularly the MA cohort and lower year PhDs; we would meet up there before and after courses, and it was distinctly
our space; the English Commons Room upstairs was the dominion of profs and while students were welcome to stop by, we always had to be professional.
Were we spoiled compared to the lot of other grad students or other institutions? Perhaps. The only other hangout space, other than the small undergrad Arts student lounge, the undergrad pub, or other eating places on campus, is the general grad student lounge, which is a 5 minute walk across a busy bus loop and parking lot, hidden in (an admittedly beautiful) old chapel tucked behind some other buildings. This space isn't great as a hangout space if for nothing else other than location, although it does have coffee and washrooms and a lovely interior. It's too far from the the convenience of the library shelves, professors' offices, and classrooms to be a practical gathering place.
Now, in another recent blow to English grad students, they have lost their office spaces in the north wing of the Murray Library. In late August, they received an email notifying them to move out.
They were given a week's notice.
The offices, which before belonged to two MAs or one PhD student, will now become communal. Every grad student in English and several other humanities disciplines will have a key to the offices, and (as I understand it) the use of them will just be on an occupied basis. First come, first served. They're essentially carrels with lockable doors.
I understand the egalitarian perspective of it for those who may not have had any office space, particularly when some of the rooms (*cough* ones without windows and with only one flourescent light *cough*) weren't used very often.
However, I think it is more indicative of the University's general belt-tightening strategy (TransformUS, psh) to cut costs, and again it is at the expense of the student. The reasons for this shift in room use has been driven by increased grad student enrollment and displaced grad students from many other humanities departments due to construction and their grad spaces being turned into classrooms. The humanities administrative assistants were left scrambling to find space during a time when available space is being reduced, and I give them all the kudos in the world for trying their best, but the simple problem is there isn't enough space (or money) allotted to humanities grad students to accommodate their research; as researchers and students, we (and the work we're doing) just isn't valuable enough to the institution.
Does that sound bitter? Full disclosure: I am, a little bit. For the University to keep hypocritically proclaiming research as one of its priorities and then shoving valuable researchers (many of whom are SSHRC funded, if they need a "value" system) into the old corners of the library (example: my office had no windows and the plugins were only two prong), then practically out of the library entirely leaves a sour taste in my mouth, particularly when upper level administration tries to frame all the cuts as having little to no impact on the students.
The benefit of having a locked office is the ability to keep all your research supplies present. For a humanities grad student, that can amount to several dozen of personal, library, interlibrary, and professor's books. When in the course of research a student can need to refer to many different books over a single day, the value of these private offices dramatically increases. They are also a personal work space with plants, posters, coffee cups; essentially, a comfortable space where one can spend several hours a day, often more than 5 days a week.
Apparently lockers will be provided in the offices eventually where personal books can be kept, but how will that work if someone else is currently in the office? Will they be big enough to fit several texts? Too many questions and conflicts remain at this point, though I hope something like that would at least help alleviate some pressure.
I can see several negative outcomes, garnered both from my own experience as a grad student and the helpless comments from others who are now preparing to spend the next years of their PhDs in home offices with research articles close at hand.
The number of Sasquatch grad students, that you hear exist but never really see, is going to climb dramatically.
Corollary: the number of grad students who come to events and interact with professors and each other is going to drop dramatically.
Similarly, all those MA students who look to PhDs for guidance are going to see a distinct reduction of mentorship, if for no other reason than the PhDs simply won't be on campus. Some of the most important discussions of my grad student career thus far happened after running into a PhD student in the hall, or when just stopping by each other's offices for a chat. The PhDs that came to English grad student events were those who spent time on campus - coming out for a drink or trivia or literary theory reading groups or the student-run colloquium or sitting in on a class wasn't a big deal when they were already on campus.
The blows to research will be frustrating and isolating, and the negative impacts on the sense of community among the department and grad students of all levels will be palpable. Of course, other areas, such as how TAs carry out preparation for classes and meeting with students and RA work, will be impacted as well; meeting up with a student by Starbucks to discuss a paper because no offices are available on short notice may not be a pleasant experience.
It's a double blow, and all I can do is watch from a distance, feel frustrated on behalf of everyone who is having to deal with this personally, and fear for what the upcoming TransformUS cuts are going to bring for the University in general.
Hopefully it won't hamstring the humanities too much.
