The design process for UCL’s new stu- dent centre, a key part of the Bloomsbury masterplan and due to open in 2018, has been criticised for not actually taking students’ views into account. UCL Un- ion’s role in the consultation process has been called into question, and it looks unlikely that a new café being built will be student run.
The student centre, being built oppo- site the still-shuttered Bloomsbury thea- tre, aims to alleviate College’s crushingly constrained study space. The café set to open within, however, is expected to be run by a private company, likely current providers Sodexo – who also run a num- ber of UK prisons (see CG 48) – although no decision has been made. This would leave UCLU with control of just four of the 11 cafés and restaurants around UCL.
At a meeting of Union Council this month, third year Hebrew and Jewish studies student and perpetual thorn in the side of authority David Dahlborn put forward a motion demanding that the student centre be run for students, not for profit. He described the lack of trans- parency over the consultation process as a “monumental failure of the responsible Sabbatical Officers”.
The advantages of a UCLU run café would include part-time job opportuni- ties for students, more revenue for clubs and societies and better value for money. Currently, a medium coffee costs 95p in UCLU’s George Farha café, whereas the cheapest equivalent coffee in the Sodexo run, generically named Café Aspretto is £1.45. In addition to this, UCLU cafés are bound to student-supported initia- tives such as Meat Free Mondays.
Last month a Union source told The Cheese Grater that UCLU effectively felt discouraged from bidding to run the café, as there was little chance of them match- ing a private company’s offer.
Sustainability, Engagement and Op- erations Officer Mohammad Ali Mumtaz disputed this, telling The Cheese Grater that “we will definitely be bidding for it”, and slamming Sodexo’s cafés as “extor- tionate”. As the decision is yet to be taken though, any potential bid will likely fall to Mumtaz’s newly elected replacement Zakariya Mohran. Elected unopposed, Mohran’s manifesto conspicuously lacks any mention of the new student centre. Those with Café Aspretto loyalty cards would do well to hold on to them.