Ending in tiers
Over the summer Heslington East has gone from a vague concept, existent only in the white binders of its planning documents and the minds of ambitious University administrators, to a building site south of Field Lane. The diggers and workmen have moved in but the University has still to successfully excavate the anxieties of students. The most recent spectre is the prospect of two campuses, segregated by prohibitive pricing. In the worst imagining Campus East flourishes, funded by astronomic room prices and growing shinier and more magnificent by the day, while Campus West crumbles slowly from neglect.
Let’s be clear. It’s neither practical nor sensible to dig one’s heels in and oppose the campus expansion; it’s going to happen. The focus now must be on striving to retain what works about the University’s current form. Chief amongst these positive elements is the intimacy such a small campus affords. Some of this will inevitably be lost but the problem will be massively exacerbated if we allow a situation to develop where the two campuses are barely recognisable as being of the same entity. Talk of ‘collegopoly’ is not an exaggeration - a scale of colleges from Old Kent Road to Mayfair is real a possibility and a disastrous one.
