![[Currents header graphic]](/homeart/currents_header.gif)
January 13, 1997
Graduate students vote to build graduate student commons with
bookstore expansion
By Francine Tyler
Since the campus opened in 1965, UCSC's graduate students have been collectively saving for a home of their own. Last month, they voted to commit the more than $1 million already saved--and pledge future resources--to build a Graduate Commons in conjunction with the Bay Tree Bookstore expansion.
When the 4,825-square-foot commons is completed in summer of the year 2000, it will encompass study spaces, a conference room, offices for graduate student organizations, and lockers and showers. A graduate lounge and a casual restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating will round out the facility.
The center, which is expected to cost $2.21 million to design and build, will be paid for with funds from a loan and the more than $1 million that has accrued from a $20-per-quarter facilities fee that graduates have paid since 1965, said Gail Heit, assistant vice chancellor for Student Affairs.
To raise additional funds to pay back the loan and maintain the center, the Graduate Student Association (GSA) called a special election in early December. Students voted on three options in Measure A: Options 1 and 2 called for an additional facilities fee ($28 and $16 respectively) to pay for construction and maintenance of the proposed Graduate Commons; Option 3 was a vote against both proposals.
Option 1 called for the facilities listed above, plus a graduate student terminal room with up to 20 ethernet connections and small meeting rooms with audiovisual equipment. It received 18 percent of the vote, falling far short of the required two-thirds majority to pass.
In accordance with the ballot language, Option 2--which collected 50 percent of the vote--also received the votes cast for Option 1, for a total of 68 percent.
When construction is completed, graduate students will pay a $16-per-quarter facilities fee for 27 years to pay back the loan and maintain the building, in addition to the $20 facilities fee they currently pay.
GSA president Kathleen Flint, who is also chair of the GSA Graduate Commons Committee, expects the commons to become a place where a chemistry grad can relax at midnight while running an experiment or where other graduate students--who are often isolated on campus--can socialize with students from other departments.
"Having a graduate student center will unite our community in a way that's unprecedented to date," says Flint, a second-year Ph.D. student in astronomy.
UCSC has recognized a need to build a student center for graduate students since the early years of the campus, and students and campus administrators have put out a number of proposals through the years to build such a center, Flint says. The most recent proposal, which was rejected in the late 1980s, would have located a graduate student center inside the Student Center near the Elena Baskin Visual Arts Studios, she says.
The design process for the bookstore expansion and commons project is nearly ready to move forward, says senior architect Bret Caton of Physical Planning and Construction. An architectural firm has been chosen, and a building committee made up of campus representatives will be appointed later this month, he says. Caton expects construction of the commons and the 16,000-square-foot bookstore expansion to start in fall 1998.
A ballot proposal to build an undergraduate "student organization and campus information center" in conjunction with the bookstore expansion was rejected by undergraduate student voters last spring. The proposal would have instituted an additional $15-per-quarter fee for undergraduate students to fund construction.