Two prominent branches of the Office of Student Affairs are in the midst of a long-awaited reshuffling of office space.
The Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture has just completed the move to its new space, the former Oak Room. The Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Life will move to the Mary Lou William Center's old location, just below the DukeCard office in the Union Building, in February. The LGBT Center's old space will house additional student affairs offices once the LGBT center moves.
Zoila Airall, assistant vice president of student affairs for campus life, and Larry Moneta, vice president of student affairs, made the decision to reshuffle the centers in January 2003 after requests for larger space from both groups.
Five years ago, Black Student Alliance leaders formed a committee to move the Mary Lou Williams Center to a better location.
"They felt it was a bad institutional gesture that the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture was relegated to the basement," said Leon Dunkley, director of the Center. Dunkley added, however, that he would hesitate to pass that judgment.
Maya Washington, the current president of BSA, continued to work for a new Mary Lou Williams Center space when past leaders graduated, and has mixed feelings about the new location.
"In terms of giving more space for programming, it doesn't solve all of our needs, but it's a step toward solving some of them," Washington said, explaining that although the new location will give the Center more prominence on campus, it does not include as much additional performance space as BSA leaders would have liked.
Dunkley was optimistic about the center's new space.
"I think things are possible here that weren't possible in the old space," he said. "We have more light and more space... we can run larger scale programs."
Students and faculty at the LGBT Center see their new basement location as an asset.
"People are sometimes intimidated to come here," said Adam Hall, a work-study student at the LGBT Center and the community interaction chair for AQUADuke. "Since [the new location] is the bottom floor of the West Union, it's discrete, so to speak, but at the same time it's a very convenient location."
The LGBT Center was in dire need of space, with books stacked in huge piles in the corners of its Flowers building offices. The office's makeshift library currently functions as a work-study space, a filing room and a reception area--where the receptionist has to sit with her back to the door because of the configuration of the small room.
"I had always said to [Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta] that if a place like the Mary Lou Williams Center space opened up, and we were able to move into it, it would be great," said Karen Krahulik, director of the LGBT center.
Renovation of the Oak Room began during the summer, and both centers were originally slated to be in their new spaces by September, but delays in furniture shipping and in renovation pushed the move-in dates back.
"We had hoped to move in over winter break," Krahulik said. "But we're happy to be moving, and if it takes another month, that's okay."
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