The New Co-op Building

... is made of glass ...

So last Friday I got to take a tour of the new co-op building. It's been scheduled to open during "summer 2002", then "September 2002", and now "December 15^th 2002". Well, it's cost us $10.8 million, and we're going to start seeing the cost of it in our January fee statements. Of course, that's not just for co-op students; the building is expected to provide a welcome environment that can be used for working, studying, or whatever else you can do in a room.

It's definitely bigger than Needles Hall, boasting 102 wired (not yet wireless) rooms for interviews, as compared to the 30-something "rooms" in Needles Hall. It's also going to have a "Co-op Student Office". Don't ask me what that is; I don't think even co-op knows exactly what it will be yet. It also has more parking, more lights, more stairs, and more windows. In fact, I'd be willing to bet there's more windows in there than anywhere else on campus. Yes, including the Science greenhouse. I think there was some kind of quota that had to be filled here; there are entire walls made of glass, and not just the outside ones. About half of the interview rooms have a glass wall, and there's a glass wall between the girls & guys change rooms. (During our tour, we could see the guy's urinals from the girl's room through the glass wall.) The clincher came when we saw a glass wall cutting halfway through the hallway, apparently for the sake of being a wall.

Let's get back to the interview rooms. In case you haven't heard about this yet, there's a button panel in each room that says "Cancel" and "Next Student" (take a look at the artist's depiction if you're having trouble picturing this).

Being brought up on Simpsons, I expected a trap door to open up somewhere when this button was pushed. You can imagine my disappointment after being informed that it would just be part of the new system — no more paper resumes, no more bins, no more paging desk (okay, so the paging desk will stick around as a backup) — everything will be completely online. Instead of being paged, you'll keep your eye on the overhead airport-style monitors. According to Bruce Lumsden (who gave us the tour), the "bin burning party" won't be until next summer term, when this new online system is to be implemented.

One more detail about the new building: it doesn't have an official name yet. If you feel like donating a lot of money, you could probably name it whatever you wanted.

Krease