Let’s Talk Dining Hall by Bence Bógnar

Allow me to start with a clumsy analogy, but one that I’m sure you’ll get: imagine you’re renting a  flat with friends, and one morning, dangerously close to Christmas, you’re walking out of your room still groggy, and you find your landlord cordoning off part of your flat. As he readily lets you know, he decided to sell your living room.  You’re in shock for a second, but only for one,  since although this is incredibly upsetting news,  it’s also surreal, downright nonsensical. You can’t just sell part of a flat! You have your stuff there, first of all, all the things you’ve been paying for, and the space you can use. Your friend who lives in the room next to yours chose this place specifically because of how conveniently big and comfortable the communal space is: it’s a place to host events, to spend time, where else would  you hang out… the kitchen? So, baffled, you ask your landlord who the buyer is. “The military,”  he says. 

The military? On the one hand, pretty much all of your friends at least mildly dislike – you,  personally, fucking hate – the military, but more importantly: how? Are there just gonna be, like,  soldiers in your flat? He responds that, well, first of all, it won’t be part of your flat anymore, and also, that nobody else wanted to buy the living room: there was, plain and simple, no other choice! So, of course, the next question is: why?  It turns out your landlord’s pay was cut, and this, obviously, is the best way to handle that. 

"One morning, dangerously close  to Christmas, you’re walking  out of your room still groggy, and you  find your landlord cordoning off part of  your flat. As he readily lets you know,  he decided to sell your living room." 

Long-winded bitterness aside, my analogy may fall flat in many ways, but this sure is what the recent announcement feels like. Dining Hall is the centre of UCU student life, I can say this without understatement. What we stand to lose is tremendous, and I’m not even going to go into the building’s emotional and historical value. Let’s stay on a material level, and think of the amenities that would need to be  (and may not be!) rehoused and reimagined. 

First, the bar. I don’t actually go to the bar myself, but I know well that half of campus regularly does. It’s impossible to imagine UCU  without it, whether it’s a source of tremendous fun or mild annoyance to you: at the end of the day, the campus would change fundamentally in its absence. Then, the study area: for whoever finds the pressure-cooker atmosphere in Voltaire simply too much, for group projects, and for when you want to semi-gossip while writing an article, this is the place to be. By the way, did y’all know we won’t have Voltaire again, either?  Yes, it will be given to the UU! Why, you ask?  Another building, in the city centre, is being sold!  But that’s a story for another day... Remember this, too, though. Take it into consideration. 

The BPA hosts a bunch of committee events,  the kitchen’s great, the upstairs part func tions as a space to host events – from the track  market to infosessions; hell, even the Town Hall  meeting about the sale itself was in the insur mountably large indoor space that Dining Hall  provides. And then, even more downstairs:  board offices, Ducks and Soup, GameCo, dance  events, the drama room, and the list continues.  What would remain of UCU without the vibrant  social sphere it cultivates in Dining Hall? Only  the rigorous academics, the miserable Dutch  winters, and everyone’s God-given right to be  cooped up in their alienated personal bubble of  an eight to sixteen-square-metre room. Maybe  

you can also have a living room you share with  a couple of unitmates and a few dozen mice.

"Call me overdramatic if you want, but it is this ugly concrete  building that keeps UCU what it is."

Then, to reiterate: the fucking military? First  of all, I have my personal misgivings about the  military industrial complexes of the world – not  particularly the Dutch one, but in general –  “misgivings” being something of an understatement. While I know many agree with me, I’m  also aware that my opinion is not shared across  campus. Even so, I think most of us can agree that, plainly, the military vibes do not mesh  with what UCU stands for, its demographics,  the social safety that should (and often already does not) serve as a cornerstone of campus…  I’m not fearmongering baselessly, either. Back  in the nineties, UCU fought for Dining Hall,  quite literally: after recurring bar fights between  students and members of the military, the latter  party retreated to base. Today, this serves as a  fun anecdote, sure, but also a cautionary tale. If  back then, when UCU was a different place than  now, largely conservative and practically ran in  the style of city-wide Dutch student associations  (meaning nothing good), conflicts already arose,  I shudder to think what would end up being the  case now. 

I suspect the reason we pay the ridiculous tuition and campus fees is for more than the academic  quality, and maybe even surpasses the guaranteed on-campus housing (though there is a lot to be said about the latter, especially with the room shortage at the beginning of the year in mind).  None of this makes UCU special, maybe novelty,  at best. The fact that there’s always something  going on, in a largely decentralised, bottom-up,  community-organised fashion, is what makes campus the space it is. The necessary spaces and resources for us to continue doing anything here, to keep UCU not just an educational institution, but a community, are being taken away from us as you’re reading this. Sure, maybe they’re renovating Clocktower in three to infinite  years: except they likely won’t. The College van  Bestuur seems to care for little except their bottom line, and renovations are expensive. Call  me overdramatic if you want, but it is this ugly concrete building that keeps UCU what it is. At least, it does to me. I have my suspicions that in some ways, it does the same for you, too.