The bill, SB 213, is sponsored by Student Action Senator Rosemary Hua and Student Action Senator-elect Lauren Week and will help dance groups on campus find spaces to practice. Hua, a dancer herself, hopes the bill will raise awareness of the issue.

“Hopefully, with this bill we’re showing the school that there’s a huge need (for practice space),” Hua said. “Our community is suffering.”

According to Hua, there are more than 15 dance groups on campus, encompassing approximately 600 students. Primarily, these groups hold practice on Lower Sproul, in front of Haas Pavilion and in Hearst Gym.

However, scheduling time for the spaces in Hearst Gym is often complicated, said Week, and with Lower Sproul closing this year for construction, available dance spaces will be increasingly difficult to find.

“Currently, dance groups have been forced to dance in the parking structures underneath the RSF and Underhill Field, which is dirty and unsafe, especially at night when most of our groups practice,” said Week in an email. “This is why SB 213 is so crucial.”

Hua negotiated a $33,000 contract with Recreational Sports Director Michael Weinberger to open up Strawberry Canyon Recreational Area for dancers during the current school year.

Weinberger said that working with the ASUC has been a great experience and that Rec Sports would be willing to continue working with the dance community as long as the ASUC can continue to supply funding.

“We’re very much willing to continue (the contract),” Weinberger said. “We just need to cover staffing. That’s where the money is going.”

Despite the addition of Strawberry Canyon, some members of the dance community still expressed concern about finding sufficient practice spaces. Although Strawberry Canyon has been helpful in alleviating the problem of limited space, Berkeley Ballroom member Caitlyn Keith said it can be difficult and inconvenient for larger dance groups to find transportation to Strawberry Canyon, and space is still limited for all dance groups.

Hua said she hopes the bill and the agreement made with Rec Sports will foster a positive relationship between the campus and the dance community.

“I’m hoping that this bill will also show the Rec Center that we’re thankful for what’s happening,” Hua said.

SB 213 will be discussed in the senate’s external committee on Monday then voted on during Wednesday’s senate meeting.

Contact Jennie Yoon at jyoon@dailycal.org.

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According to ASUC Student Spaces Deputy Briana Mullen, 200 student groups will be able to move into the storage spaces beginning Thursday and lasting until next Tuesday.

The move was originally postponed from its original dates of Aug. 9 to Aug. 10 due to building code issues that involved checking the fire sprinkler system in Hearst Gym. According to Mullen, the move was delayed a week.

“We are on a tight schedule right now, especially for our orientation that will happen on Monday,” Mullen said.

ASUC Executive Vice President Justin Sayarath said the student groups will be moving based on their floor location in Eshleman. According to Mullen, the ASUC offices will be moved Thursday, and the Center for Student Leadership and other offices on Eshleman’s fourth floor will move to the gym on Friday.

The rest of the groups will be moved on Saturday, except for those moving into Room 18. Groups to be located in Room 18 will move into their spaces on Tuesday, when construction on the final storage room is scheduled to be completed.

“We were delayed a couple of days, but the move is still happening,” Sayarath said. “It was later than planned, but we’re preparing the locks and clocks in the brand new spaces and checking the inventory.”

Christopher Yee is an assistant news editor.

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The Hearst Gym location is currently dealing with code issues — which involve a necessary check of the gym’s fire sprinkler system by campus Fire Marshal Tony Yuen, who is currently out sick — that could set the move back an extra week.

ASUC Executive Vice President Justin Sayarath, who is in charge of the move, said he is currently waiting for a new move-out date from his project manager.

“(The delay) is cutting our deadline really close,” Sayarath said. “We really hope it won’t impact when students can be in the space — we recognize the need for students to get into their spaces.”

Open Computing Facility General Manager Dara Adib said in an email that the ASUC has had a difficult job having to move in all the student groups, especially with the delay.

“Surprises are no surprise when you have to quickly move many diverse student groups right before fall semester begins,” Adib said in the email.
The ASUC still plans to hold a space and orientation meeting for the student groups on Aug. 20 to give the groups information about access to their spaces at Hearst Gym.

ASUC officials facilitated a stakeholder process in the spring semester during which members from student groups — approximately 200 of which will have to be relocated — communicated their space needs. Space was then assigned after an application process.

Along with considering factors involved in the move, Sayarath said his team still has to take into account lock and combination distribution for cages, signage to signify locations for groups and telephone checks.

According to Sayarath, the original plan was for student groups to move their items over the course of the past week, which would give time for Sayarath and ASUC Student Spaces Deputy Briana Mullen to reinventory student groups’ boxes.

Mullen said she and Sayarath have had tribulations with the *large-scale* move but are looking forward to seeing the fruits of their labor. She also said an upside of the move for students is that they can evaluate how they have been using their space and how they can grow with the transition into a downsized, shared space facility.

“We’re hoping everyone can be flexible,” she said. “The change in environment will reinvigorate students’ (primary group) mission.”

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Students approved the B.E.A.R.S. Initiative in the 2010 ASUC general election, which created a student fee to fund the revitalization of Lower Sproul. As part of the process, Eshleman will be completely rebuilt, meaning the more than 200 student groups currently housed in the building must relocate in the coming months.

For Open Computing Facility General Manager Dara Adib, the biggest question is dealing with a smaller space and the equipment that cannot be moved.

“We currently have six racks of server equipment and we only have room for two in the new space,” Adib said. “Our current air conditioning unit is also too big, so we have to figure out what we’re going to do with it.”

The facility is a student-run organization that provides computing, web hosting, printing, email and storage services to the campus community.

Adib explained that while the facility currently has 25 available computers in its ground floor laboratory in Eshleman, the new space only has room for 16.

“Problems are to be expected. Our challenge is to fit everything and be ready for the fall semester,” Adib said. “I really don’t know what might happen in terms of server and service problems.”

According to Adib, if everything goes as planned, there will only be one day of server downtime. In comparison, Adib pointed out that the last time the facility had to move, there was a full month of downtime.

When the facility moved from Heller Lounge in the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union to Eshleman three years ago, there was an increase in space and resources and more people began using the facility.

But there were problems with that move as well, according to Adib, who said that facility members had to deal with asbestos, burst pipes and, at one point, a flooded lab.

“With any of these moves, bad things happen,” Adib said.

The surge process is being spearheaded by ASUC Executive Vice President Justin Sayarath and ASUC Student Spaces Deputy Briana Mullen.

“It’s a tough process because it’s not easy to get students together to discuss space,” Sayarath said.

The ASUC had a stakeholder process to get input from students on their space needs, according to Sayarath. The space was then assigned after an application process.

“We’ve had to plan data and phone services as well as locks, tables and trash and composting. It’s really cool because it’s completely student owned,” Sayarath said.

According to Sayarath, the actual move will be even more complicated than assigning the space, as the different groups have different boxes and items that need to be moved.

Sayarath and Mullen worked for two weeks to compile an inventory sheet, to which student groups had until July 3 to make additions or changes. The inventory was then given to the campus movers, who will provide a quote for the cost of moving.

Sayarath said the ASUC will hold a mandatory Hearst Space Orientation on Aug. 20, where ASUC leaders will address trash, recycling, tabling, phone and internet questions. Groups will also be provided with key and lock forms at the orientation.

“I want the new space to not be like Eshleman because students haven’t really taken care of it,” Sayarath said. “People see it as the heart of student life, and it looks bad.”

Sayrath said the space at Hearst Gym will be much more collaborative, with more open cubicles and common space. But Student Advocate Stacy Suh said she had some reservations about the new space.

“Internally, our office is a very tight-knit group,” Suh said. “I think that natural bonding might be lost because the space is smaller so there will be less people in the office.”

Suh’s office offers help to any student or group involved in a dispute with the campus, and she said the smaller space could also make maintaining client privacy a problem.

Adib said though the ASUC has been helpful, the process has been difficult with new elected officers overseeing it every year.

“This has been the most difficult project I’ve had to do with ASUC. If it wasn’t for Briana, I might have quit by now,” Sayarath said. “But I think it’s going to be OK. The student groups are aware of what needs to be done.”

As for the many groups who are moving, the idea of leaving Eshleman Hall elicits many emotional feelings.

“The OCF organization and this lab are one and the same,“ Adib said. “The thought of separating the two is tragic.”

Timofey Semenov is the Chief of Staff of the Student Advocate’s Office, and according to Suh, handled most of the packing of the student advocate’s office.

“I’m sure that I speak for every (SAO member) to have gone through 204 Eshleman when I say that many special memories and important moments were cherished in that office, and that — in many respects — the move out of 204 Eshleman truly feels like losing a great friend,” Semenov said in an email.

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During the two years it will be closed, the museum will begin its collections-move project, which will cost the campus $4.2 million, according to a campus press release. Through the project, the museum’s underground storage space will be retrofitted, and its stored inventory will be re-organized.

After the move, the museum’s inventory will be stored in the UC Berkeley Regatta Art Collections Facility in Richmond and in a renovated space under the museum. Artifacts will no longer be stored in the Hearst Gym on Bancroft Way, and while this location has served the museum for a long time, the regatta facility will provide more appropriate storage conditions for the school’s artifacts, according to Penny Betts, head of development at the museum.

The museum will also spend time cataloging and maintaining its collections, according to Christine Shaff, communications director of the campus’s Facilities Services Department.

“The regatta space will be better suited for storage for the kind of artifacts and materials that they have (at the museum),” Shaff said.

According to Betts, the climate-controlled regatta facility will not only provide appropriate conditions for the collections, but will also provide easier access to artifacts, because it will be modified to improve its accessibility.

“We came specifically for the native Californian cultures exhibit,” said Elena Tarango, who came from Sacramento to visit the museum for the first time on Friday. “It was neat to see some of the things here and to know that they’re kept safe.”

Although the museum will be closed for two years, this will not affect the current museum staff, and in fact, 15 additional staff members have been hired to help with moving the collections.

The museum has also announced that its facilities will undergo renovation during the collection-move project. The renovations will be privately funded and will include improved museum galleries, a new welcome center, an updated entryway and a number of additional improvements.

The opportunity for the renovations presented itself when it became apparent that seismic retrofitting as well as improvements to the underground storage space would be necessary.  According to Shaff, plans for the renovations have not yet been approved.

“There are a number of steps in this process (of renovating the museum), and we have gone through some, and there are more to come,” Betts said.

During the move and renovation, there will be a two-year moratorium on loans, acquisitions, research, classes held in collections areas and new publication photography. However, the renovation will not affect the classrooms in Kroeber Hall, which houses the museum.

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Though the demolition of Eshleman is scheduled to begin about a year from now, occupants of the building are still scheduled to move out at the beginning of the fall semester, according to Christine Shaff, communications manager for the campus facilities services department.

The project’s total costs will reach over $750 million — which includes the $193 million budget approved by the UC Board of Regents as well as more than $500 million to service the initial debt — and renovations that include Eshleman and the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union building are expected to end in late 2015. Shaff said that despite the delay in demolition, the approximate 2015 completion date of the project remains unchanged.

“I think the timeline was shifted back because of timing issues,” said CalSERVE Senator and ASUC executive vice presidential candidate Anthony Galace, who has worked with students and administrators on the project. “People didn’t want to begin construction before plans of the building were complete.”

However, Shaff said the project manager intended demolition to occur in the spring instead of fall “for at least some time,” owing to details around construction and plans that needed to be worked out.

She also said the months of delay between the move-out and the actual demolition will be needed for preparations, which include moving out all furniture, recycling and repurposing equipment and ensuring that all hazardous materials are cleaned out of the building.

“There is a lot of work that has to be done before the big equipment comes in and chomps the outside of the building,” Shaff said, adding that Campbell Hall — a building on the north side of campus, closed down last semester and also scheduled to be demolished — was found to contain asbestos under the floor tiles, complicating plans.

With Eshleman set to be under demolition and reconstruction for the next several years, all student groups currently housed in the building — which include the ASUC, ASUC Auxiliary, The Daily Californian, and more — will be moving to various locations on- and off-campus.

According to Galace, more than 200 student groups will be moving into newly partitioned “surge” spaces in Hearst Gymnasium.

According to an ASUC spreadsheet, decisions on each group’s space allocations — made by the ASUC executive vice president’s office — were finalized on March 8.

“There’s about a 30 percent decrease in square footage,” Galace said of the new space. “It’s definitely going to take compromises. It’s definitely going to take adjustments. But … in my interactions with student groups, a lot of them are already prepared to move into the surge space.”

Dara Adib, former general manager of the campus Open Computing Facility — a student-run facility that offers free lab hosting and printing and will move to the gym — said in an email that the facility’s move from Heller Lounge to the basement of Eshleman three years ago was met with excessive lab and server downtime.

“I really think we’ve worked hard so far to minimize disruption caused by the move, and the ASUC, university and architects have been helpful,” Adib said of the facility’s upcoming move out of Eshleman. “(But) moves aren’t pretty and some problems may be unforeseeable.”

The Daily Cal will move out of Eshleman at the end of summer, relocating its offices to an off-campus building on Hearst Avenue.

Shaff said the campus began preliminary work on the Hearst Gym spaces over spring break.

“There are a lot of people involved in this project,” Shaff said. “There’s so much work — it’s exciting. We’re working on it, and we’re excited to get moving.”

Amy Wang covers academics and administration.

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