Construction on the fourth floor of the Student Union has finally wrapped up, and the newly renovated space has opened its doors to students.
After five months of renovation, the Student Union held a grand re-opening Tuesday afternoon of its new spaces for the LGBTQ+ Center, Latinx/Chicanx Center for Advocacy and Student Affairs (La CASA), Asian Pacific American Student Services (APASS) and more.
“We went on a campus tour in 2019, and we started going around and looking at student space,” USC President Carol Folt said at the re-opening. “And, you know, it needed work. Even though beautiful, wonderful things were happening in all our cultural centers. Even when the space isn’t good, people make it great and that is also something we have to remember, this isn’t the new beginning. This is just the extension of all those wonderful things..”
The renovations doubled the physical space for La CASA and APASS, added 300 square feet to the LGBTQ+ Center, and revamped the Native American and Pasifika lounge. Conference rooms and sleeping pods were added for student use, along with counseling offices for embedded counseling and mental health services, a full service shared kitchen, a dedicated space for the Justice, Education, Diversity and Inclusion Peer Education program, and a newly established Gender Equity Programs Office. In addition, all of the centers received new furnishings and decorations to bring new life to the rooms, all with the central motto of ‘You belong at USC.’
“You know what is wonderful about the space, what I was told people wanted, was that each space honors a culture or a set of identities in very specific and particular ways,” Folt said. “Yet each space is also meant to honor that intersectionality and have open spaces and to be places where people are welcome, however they get there.”
The fourth floor was renovated in 2020 as part of a phased approach. Additionally, both the Daily Trojan and El Rodeo were reallocated on the fourth floor, along with receiving updated equipment. Megan van der Toorn, Director of SEIP Intercultural Services and the LGBTQ+ Student Center, says that the reconstruction was a result of the increasing number of students wanting to gather in the communal spaces, as well as student advocacy to open university space to more identity groups.
“Our goal really is to have students find meaningful spaces, meaningful communities,” said van der Toorn. “So that might be in the physical spaces that we hold, in the ability to find folks who hold similar identities and lived experiences.”
“It’s helping to make a big university a little bit smaller,” she said. “We know 40,000 students can be overwhelming for folks, so our goal is to create salient communities for folks in one of our centers, and multiples of our centers, to help folks feel like they belong and that they can thrive here at USC.”
Naddia Palacios, the assistant vice provost for student affairs, student equity and inclusion, said that student advocacy has played a role not only in pushing for improvement of existing spaces, but also the carving out of new ones. Recently formed community spaces such as the Native American and Pasifika lounge and the Middle Eastern & North African Student Lounge, a subset of the Center for Black Cultural and Student Affairs, were both created after students came forward asking for a space of their own on campus.
Palacios emphasized the communal feeling she’s hoping USC Student Life can foster across the different identity spaces.
“I can tell you that in the past three years, we’ve made significant efforts to be more inclusive in our space allocations and include as many communities as possible,” Palacios said. “But we also want to reiterate that all the spaces are available for everyone. They still have access to the kitchen, and to all the other centers. They shouldn’t feel like that is the only space on campus that they can utilize.”
Additionally, she wanted to make sure that all students know they are welcome to explore the newly renovated areas, and that the student union is really a place for all Trojans to explore and enjoy.
“There are sleeping pods; there’s spaces for students to study; there’s conference rooms – and we’re really looking at this as a way for all students to be able to access the spaces,” Palacios said. “Granted, they are within the student equity and inclusion umbrella but we welcome all students to come and utilize all the spaces that we were able to renovate and expand.”