The undergraduate SA Senate called on the university to host a referendum on the allocation of student spaces during a meeting Wednesday night, with 19 ayes and one nay.
This comes two months after University Police escorted sit-in protesters out of Student Union 373 — a queer community space run by UB’s LGBTA club since 2021 — which ended the club’s months-long fight against the university administration to keep the space from closure. The room was converted into a commuter lounge that opened this semester.
The Senate remained silent on explicit support for the LGBTA club to keep the room throughout the fall semester; some even criticized the idea, citing possible favoritism that would violate SA’s viewpoint neutrality policy. However, all senators unanimously were in favor of protecting student spaces as a whole, calling on the university at the end of the fall semester to review the ban on club-exclusive rooms.
Members of UB’s LGBTA club have been pushing for a student referendum since a meeting Dec. 5 with university staff, including Vice President Brian Hamluk. At the time, Hamluk was receptive to conducting a referendum, but did not promise that the university would reopen student-run spaces even if the majority voted in favor.
“If the students passed a referendum and there was still not a way to guarantee that some student organizations wouldn’t be disenfranchised, we wouldn’t do it,” Hamluk said at the meeting.
SA Senator Grant Peterson, who was present at the Dec. 5 meeting with Student Life, said that the resolution would put pressure on the administration to take action.
“It pushes the university to fix this mess with the room spaces,” Peterson said at the meeting. “It’s problematic for clubs and other student groups that exist.”
Peterson said that the exact details of the referendum in terms of how it would be conducted should not be SA’s responsibility: a sentiment echoed by SA President Aisha Adam. “I don’t believe that it’s our job as students to find the space to house ourselves,” Adam said at the meeting. “We all come here and trust the university to protect us. We pay them a lot of money to keep us safe, to give us a space.”
Hamluk told The Spectrum Tuesday that the Student Life department is in the process of reviewing the resolution and will be in contact with Adam in the coming days to discuss it.
Lorien Samarra, a junior e-board member of UB’s LGBTA club, hopes to see the university take SA’s resolution seriously.
“I am confident that when this resolution is put out, the students will overwhelmingly vote in support of student-run spaces and will put pressure on UB admin to reverse their decision to close down every student-run space in SU,” Samarra wrote in a text message to The Spectrum.
Mylien Lai contributed to the reporting of this article.
The news desk can be reached at news@ubspectrum.com.
Photo: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
