On October 1st, Dean Moran announced that Victoria University will be the law school’s temporary home for the next two years. Classes, student spaces, and other law school facilities will be moved across the street while the new building is under construction for the academic years of 2013/2014 and 2014/2015.
Many details of this arrangement are still being worked out. The faculty will be meeting with staff from Victoria University throughout the month of October to finalize classrooms, study areas, and student social space. One of the priorities of the faculty is ensuring that the classrooms are adequate for law students’ particular needs.
“Nearly 100% of our students use laptops”, said Archbold, noting that the classrooms “require places for laptops to go, and technology for professors who use PowerPoint. Essentially all of the capabilities, and hopefully more, should be available in the interim space.”
Both the SLS and the Faculty plan to consult the student body during this process. The Student Building Consultation Committee, composed of both faculty and SLS members, will be meeting regularly throughout the year to discuss the ongoing preparations.
Location, Location, Location
Most classrooms on Victoria campus are in the Northrop Frye building and “Old Vic”, the large central building south of Isabel Bader Theatre. It is likely that the majority of law classes will be located in these two buildings. The law library will be moved into the Birge Carnegie building. The details of designated law student space for events and clubs is not yet known.
Law students will also have access, like any U of T student, to the other facilities at Victoria College. This includes the Goldring Center, which is currently under construction but will be complete by Fall 2013 The Goldring center, in addition to housing a renovated Wymilwood café, will feature a licensed bar and student meeting spaces.
Students will still have access to some existing facilities in our current buildings. The SLS office and some locker spaces in Flavelle will still be accessible during the construction period. Falconer classrooms and offices will also be accessible.
Library Study Space Sharply Reduced
At a Town Hall on the transitional space, Chief Law Librarian John Papadopoulos explained that the law library would be moving into the Birge Carnegie building. Rather than replace an existing library, the law school is converting space currently used by the Victoria College students association and Wymilwood café. The current Victoria student lounge—a large, high-ceilinged room on the main floor—will function as a reading and study room, with long tables for students. The current Wymilwood café seating area will house the library’s stacks.
This transitional arrangement has some limitations. Bora Laskin library has 220,000 volumes in it, but there will only be space for 30,000 in Birge Carnegie. An additional 50,000 volumes will be stored at Robarts. However, as Mr. Papadopoulos points out, most jd students use only a very small portion of those 220,000 volumes. Those texts used most frequently by JD students will be included in the 30,000 readily available in Birge Carnegie.
The number of study spaces will be sharply reduced, from 300 in Bora Laskin Library to about 80 or 90 in Birge Carnegie. To cover the difference, law students will have to use other nearby libraries. Both EJ Pratt and Emmanuel College libraries are closeby, and available to all U of T students.
Victoria Campus: The Inside Scoop
Ultra Vires spoke to Shoaib Ali, the President of the Victoria College Students’ Administrative Council (VUSAC), about the law school’s use of Victoria campus over the next two years.
Shoaib didn’t foresee Vic students being at all concerned about the influx of law students. “Our students are very excited for the Goldring center to open. So we’re not really worried about not having enough student space.”
Although Shoaib told us that Victoria has a beautiful campus, it does have some drawbacks. “Vic is very segregated from the rest of campus by Queen’s park, so it tends to feel isolated”. Hopefully law students—already accustomed to being separated from the rest of campus— will not find this a significant drawback.
Asked to comment on the rumoured lack of plugins, Shoaib told us that this problem has recently been mitigated. “Recently, [the property committee] received an update—every classroom in the college has now been digitized—they now have the requisite amount of plugs and projectors.”
