University of Utah Students Losing Resources

If you’ve ever lived on-campus, you know about the Heritage Center. It’s where you had your meal plan and stuffed your face on eggs with suspiciously uniform color and consistency. It’s where you played pool and, if the fancy struck, studied with friends. It’s where you checked your mail and got care packages from your family. It’s where you used the dance room to practice zumba or whatever else your heart desired.

If you’re like me and eventually moved off-campus as an upperclassman, you may even have kept going back for such resources. But the Heritage Center doesn’t want the prodigal student to return home after all, it seems.

Starting now, students cannot reserve the dance studio in the HC unless they live on-campus. In fact, even if the studio is open and not being used, you can’t even show up and use it unless you live on-campus.

This policy change would make sense if resident students frequently had trouble using the studio due to its occupation by non-resident students. But this is not the case. My friends and I have used the room dozens of times over the last three years (one one of which I lived on-campus) and never encountered such problems. Since each student is only guaranteed an hour slot and must leave after that if other students show up to use the room, it worked out quite well for everyone involved. No longer, however.

But I must not exaggerate. Students who do not live on campus can still use the studio. They simply must book in advance, pay a minimum $10 fee per hour, and sign a lengthy contract as an “external organization” leasing the studio.

Now why on earth are such actions necessary? As said, I would understand if schedule conflicts had been occurring. I would understand if non-resident students had access to another studio perhaps on lower-campus. But to take away resources from long-time students out-of-the-blue seems to me capricious and unwarranted. Never mind that I pay thousands of dollars in tuition. Never mind that when my friends and I have used the room we have bought coffee and snacks at the little market there, putting back into the system.

The authorities at the Heritage Center no longer recognize me as a student, but as an external business, with whom they must have a contract before I may use such resources. No matter that I am still at student at the University of Utah. No, there will be no more dancing at the HC.