Exec team start the push for grassing over of SU car park in a campaign starting in February
Plans to grass over the Students’ Union car park proposed by former Huddersfield Student Editor Anton Jidkov have taken a further step towards becoming reality.
A motion put to Union Council in October, proposed by Jidkov and backed by the newspaper, was debated and discussed and finally passed unanimously into SU policy.
The policy, altered by current Disabilities officer Michael Mattinson, states that the Union believes the area should be made into a ‘grassy quad’ while preserving disabled parking facilities and safety bus parking space.
It resolves to lobby the University to change the car park into a more student-friendly grassy area.
A campaign is to take place on 2-3 February to encourage the University to hold a trial period of the plan during summer 2010.
The campaign is the third to be run by the sabbatical team in the new year and will be headed by VP Internal Affairs, Sohail Afsar.
Environment and Ethics officer, Adam Ingram, elected in the October by-elections, has expressed interest in assisting the organisation and running of the campaign.
The car park area, owned by the University’s Estates and Facilities department is used exclusively by staff and, Jidkov’s policy states, is unattractive and difficult to navigate.
What’s wrong with the grassy area opposite the Estates Building, just around the corner from this space?
Previous claims that the car park doesn’t benefit students are a falicy – a numnber of talented and well respected lecturers have chosen to leave the University for positions closer to home, at least partly because their commute is difficult, and they have to leave the house so early to arrive by 8 to get a parking space.
The fact that the plan is “get rid of all the parking space except for the bus because that’s ours and there’s nowhere else to put it” shows how ridiculous and impractical these plans are.
The main problem is that the entire campus is one big slap of concrete, other than the area outside the estates building and a bit of unkept grass surrounding the canalside and sports hall.
Yes we live in an urban town, and yes we go to an urban university, but why aren’t we at least attempting to make the campus feel more homely? In general it is a dead, cold, concrete graveyard. New seating has been provided in the courtyard between the CAB and the CSB, which once had some grass to it prior to the building, and that is cold dead concrete…
In the modern ‘green’ world that we live in, this University is going backwards and taking green areas with wooden seating away and replacing it with concrete. The Students’ Union is attempting to change that.
The space being put aside for the safety bus and any disabled parking is for easy access to the building for the disabled, unless you’d rather they had to travel around the back of the Union to get in the safety bus?
The plans are practical, we are willing to undergo certain compromises, but the lecturers not being able to park on campus just isn’t enough. Very few people in the jobmarket have the capacity to park where they work, it’s a part of life. Also, the lecturers have their own union to deal with their parking, OUR priority is the students, not lecturers.
And putting barriers in the way of retaining good lectures benefits the students who they teach in precisely what way?