By Kodie Cherrille & Megan Lambert (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: July 15, 2015
Whether you’re a new student walking into any UFV building with a new sense of purpose and wonder or a seasoned fourth-year who has watched every stage of the construction of the building with the beak-like beams protruding from the front, you might be wondering what’s going to be in the Student Union Building (SUB).
Well, here’s your go-to guide. After seven years of financial negotiations, revised floor plans, and construction, the Student Union Building is now open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the summer, and will have a grand opening celebration in the fall.
On the first floor, there’s a bright blue area with a counter and a silver metal folding door that holds the new coffee shop, called Fair Grounds. SUS president Thomas Davies says ethical manufacturing and organic farming of the coffee is part of what gave the coffee shop its name.
“It has a ring to it. It fits the mandate or the theme of what the coffee shop is doing,” he says.
On June 23, SUS held a free coffee-tasting event where students, staff, and faculty visited the SUB to try out coffee and baked goods. SUS collected votes from about 150 people, and one of the winners are a roast from Doi Chaang coffee co., partly owned by the farmers who grow its coffee.
Davies says the part-time job postings for Fair Grounds, set to open in early August, are available online. Food services coordinator Lauren Southern will be overseeing the operations of the shop.
Replacing AfterMath, the SUS restaurant located next to the gym, the Canoe is on the second floor of the SUB. Davies says the restaurant has an expanded kitchen, meaning SUS is able to provide catering for events inside the SUB, but that the menu has not been finalized yet.
“Over the next few weeks we’ll be testing and trying out some different things and seeing what works well, so I’d expect by early August things would be set,” he says.
Is your computer being a jerk and keeping you from looking at cat gifs when you should be doing homework? The IT Services centre can (probably) help you with that.
The IT Services centre on the third floor of the SUB will look at students’ laptops, cell phones, tablets, and towers and offer help with tech-related issues. The service was added on to SUS fees at $4.98 per semester, after a referendum passed in January 2015 to fund the centre. Though the service has not been offered during summer, SUS has been collecting fees to help train staff and stock the centre with equipment.
Services will include diagnostics, computer virus removals, and phone and tablet screen repairs. While the labour is free, any required parts for the repair will paid for by the student. If parts are required for a repair, the centre will contact the student for permission to purchase them before the transaction is made.
Students in Chilliwack will be able to drop their faulty technology at the CEP SUS office, where it will be shipped to the Abbotsford campus, repaired, and shipped back to Chilliwack.
SUS VP Internal Ricardo Coppola explained that the centre will hire somewhere between three to six UFV students, depending on how many hours each student can put in.
“Personally, I think it’s going to get really busy,” said Coppola. “But it’s something that we’ll just have to see … we’ll take things as they come.”
UFV student Alan DeJesus is the manager of the IT Services centre.
