Next Steps: The Blueprint for Action
Student Life should be big. It should be central. It should be visible. The Smith Campus Center has potential to house Office of Student Life offices as well as student organizations. The Smith Campus Center could potentially house all OSL offices including the Office of Student Involvement (OSI), BGLTQ Office, the Women's Center, and the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI).
The College is now reorganizing the SOCH by removing half of the student organization office space, leaving room to figure out what to do with the freed-up space. I argue that this is a great move. It would allow for an easier move for the remaining student organizations to move to the Smith Campus Center for daily operations and leave the 3rd floor of the SOCH to be storage and mailboxes for multiple student organizations.
In addition, since the Office of Career Services does a lot of work in the SOCH, they could move all of their work to SOCH so that it would be easier to conduct programming. This is best because the culture of Harvard will always have students going anywhere to find a job. A walk to the SOCH for this would never be an issue. It is a win-win for students and OCS staff. This would also free up the current OCS building for another College office to conduct programming such as the Women's Center, EDI, or the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations. This move would be significant because it would lead to an important University-sponsored office finally being above ground and immediately visible to all students.
Increase access to food served in the Smith Campus Center
Allow BoardPlus to be used at the various vendors
Experiment with providing each student with a certain number of meal swipes that can be used in the Center
Provide late-night dining options - most likely not ones that compete with full meals like those offered in dining halls
Dedicate multiple event spaces that can be used by undergraduates and undergraduate student organizations
The SOCH can still be used as another rehearsal and event space. Keep the first floor and penthouse dedicated to this purpose. This is where the SOCH actually does better than the Mayer Campus Center at Tufts. We have some event spaces, Tufts does not in their campus center.
However, we still have work to do so that we can continue building more spaces for students to use and collaborate, not simply store books and trophies like some organizations do in the SOCH currently.
