When thinking about the Union, I am told many things come to mind: a place to eat, a place to study, a place to visit friends and attend programs. It is, in fact, these things, but many more, as well.
One of the things students in particular might not think about is that the Union is primarily the community center for our campus. The University of Utah is a huge environment where over 50,000 people go to school or work. As the community center, it is our mission to find ways to make everyone feel welcome and at home, and help students in particular find smaller groups of their peers in order to build community and foster campus life.
It is also a leadership lab–a place where students can implement skills they have learned in the classroom into practice. There are more than 270 clubs and organizations in which students can get involved. There is the Union Board and the Union Programming Council, The Associated Students of the University of Utah and the Presenters Office, The Daily Utah Chronicle, greek organizations and the Center for Ethnic Student Affairs and Orientation, to name a few. These provide opportunities for students to meet new friends, gain leadership and programming skills and better campus life at the U.
I know that generally people “want it now” in today’s culture. This causes us to forget how far we have come in the past few years as the community center for our campus. I don’t usually like using too many statistics in articles like this, but here I think it is important for students to know. During the 2001-2002 academic year, 1.5 million people visited the Union. UPC programmed 23 events that were attended by fewer than 6,000 students. There were approximately 7,500 meetings, programs and events held in the Union, and it had not been renovated or remodeled in decades.
Today, things are much different. Last year, more than 4.5 million people visited the Union. The UPC programmed 28 events attended by more than 55,000 students. We hosted more than 8,500 meetings and programs, and we have renovated many different public spaces for use by the students. In short, the Union is much more vibrant than it once was.
So what is in store for the future? Next fall, students will come back to campus with the Union having a student lounge. This has been the No. 1 request for the past six years. It will be located where the Women’s Resource Center is now, and that will be relocated to an area on the fourth floor. We will reopen the art gallery in that space and it will also be set up to provide lounge areas as well as study areas. Probably the most exciting addition, to me at least, is that we will be providing satellite service for several international news broadcasts. This will allow some international students to get news from their native countries in their native language as well as provide a service where students studying those languages can hear them and learn about those cultures.
Other issues we will be addressing in the future include looking at ways we can increase space in the Union and ways to provide more learning and leadership opportunities. Consider, for example, that in 1957 when the building was built, there were about 9,400 students at the U. The first Crimson Nights program last year attracted almost 8,000 students. Offices such as The Chronicle, ASUU, Program Board, LGBT, International Student Scholar, Orientation and, yes, the Union Administration are bursting at the seams with no space to expand or house all the staff currently working in the building. Space for student organizations is minimal at best.
We will be addressing these things over the next several years, and I will take this opportunity to let students know that they can have a direct voice in those decisions by getting involved with the Union Board.
This is primarily the students’ building and you can have a direct impact on its future by getting involved!
Whit Hollis is the Union director.