UFV opened up Building K on Nov. 4 and has been hosting select classes since. The newly renovated building (formerly Finnegan’s restaurant) has 10 classrooms, two computer labs, and one meeting room.
No one saw any downsides to the new building. It was favoured by the university because of the existing structure and proximity to campus. Unfortunately, the university has received many complaints from faculty about students being late to class due to the extremely remote location of Building K. A student claimed their always on-time professor was 40 minutes late to class. One faculty emailed the president’s office claiming over half of their class didn’t even show up on the first day because the students got lost trying to find Building K.
To address the complaints, UFV held a press conference on Friday in front of the renovated building.
“We always want to be moving forward at this university; therefore, we have finalized plans to relocate Building K to a new location that will be more convenient for students, staff, and faculty,” a UFV representative said, hoping to summon loud applause for the university’s innovative idea.
Instead the audience, filled with students, staff, faculty, and members of the community, responded with silence followed by many raised hands for questions.
The representative explained that the university is going to pluck the entire building from the ground, move it across campus, and ground it somewhere entirely new, all in one piece. The projected start time is January 2020 and is estimated to cost six times more than the price of constructing a new building.
When asked why the university wouldn’t just construct a new building due to the assumably enormous amount of money the project will cost, the representative said the school wants to be more environmentally conscious. Discarding all of the brand new materials that were used to renovate Building K into the dump would be incredibly wasteful.
It has not been confirmed where Building K 2.0 will be located. Rumors are already spreading that it will go right in the middle of the Green, making it the most easily accessible building on the Abbotsford campus due to its central location.
Asking around, students didn’t seem to care very much about the project, just a shrug and a “whatever.” It appears that as long as students can take all of their classes near each other, all is fine.
Regardless of the university’s lack of detailed plans for the project, it still seems to be going forwards, regardless of complaints about the uselessness, idiocity, and bizarreness of the entire plan.
Image: Mikaela Collins/The Cascade
