50 things Camosun College needs to do in its next 50 years

On September 16, 1971, Camosun College first opened its doors to students. This year, the college is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and it got us thinking about how far Camosun has come in 50 years. But where does it need to go from here?

We tapped into our Nexus team to get, straight from the mouths of students, what the college needs to do. This isn’t press-release mumbo-jumbo or buzzword brand brainstorming. This is just real talk from real students, 10 of them, presented here in alphabetical order.

A note on methodology: you may notice some overlap between writers here (hello, food options on campus!). We intentionally left that in; we figured if there’s a problem that’s on students’ minds to such a degree that it gets mentioned multiple times here, it should stay in for emphasis.

So, it’s been a successful and wild ride for the first 50 years (and Nexus has been around to document it for 31 of those years); read on to find out what 50 things Camosun College needs to do in its next 50 years. We’ll check back in in a half-century to see how many of these became reality.

Greg Pratt, managing editor

Ethan Badr, contributing writer

1: Go carbon neutral
As we, hopefully, all know by now, global warming and climate change are some of our planet’s most pressing issues. We as a species have been lacklustre in our attempts to combat these problems over the last 50 years. That needs to change if we are to prevent disaster. Camosun needs to go carbon neutral in its next 50 years. Hopefully, it won’t take that long.

2: Stop selling single-use plastics
In that same vein, Camosun needs to stop allowing the sale of single-use plastics in the cafeterias. The recycling stations are simply not enough. Many plastics, even if put in the recycling bin, cannot be recycled and ultimately end up in the landfill or the ocean. Plastic pollution is a plague on our planet—and, especially, our oceans. Camosun needs to be a part of the solution.

3: Remember heritage buildings and environmental impact when renovating
50 years is a long time, and no doubt changes will be made to the physical appearances of Camosun’s campuses in that time. The college is lucky to have beautiful green campuses and should endeavour to protect its greenspace. Some buildings will, undoubtedly, come down, but as much as possible Lansdowne’s heritage buildings should be maintained. When constructing new buildings, environmental impact and aesthetics should be priorities. Keep Camosun’s campuses beautiful, green, and clean.

4: Keep building Indigenous relationships
Camosun needs to continue building relationships with our Indigenous communities and work with them to make Indigenous perspectives an integrated and integral part of the Camosun experience. “Camosun” itself is a Lkwungen word that means “where different waters meet and are transformed.” The college needs—always—to live up to that name and to honour its origin.

5: Be better prepared for the need to have classes online
We’ve all had to adapt to online learning. Some classes have been better suited to it than others, and some students better suited to it, as well. As the end of the pandemic draws near, Camosun needs to continue developing its online learning so that students and teachers can be better prepared if a situation like the shutdowns due to COVID-19 ever arises again. That said, it should not be a replacement for face-to-face learning—Camosun needs to integrate the best of both learning strategies in a thoughtful and responsible way.

Fred Cameron, contributing writer
1: Develop a more engaging platform for online classes
I understand that everyone at Camosun scrambled to prepare themselves to go online in the wake of COVID-19, but course plans that work in the classroom don’t necessarily work in a virtual setting. We all hold a stake in this. Often, teachers’ questions are met with silence as the student is off making dinner or playing video games. Anyone can memorize information from a textbook, but without direct interaction with teachers and classmates, only a small fraction of the information is retained.

2: Increase arts programming
It seems like funding for arts programming is always the first thing to go when there are budget shortfalls. As Canadians, we have long prided ourselves on the music, comedy, and writing that we send to the world stage. But as the marketplace continues to move online, the CRTC will likely provide less of a push than they had for artists of previous generations. It will largely be up to academic institutions to provide innovative programming that encourages experimentation to keep up with the rest of the world.

3: Students need to get out and participate
After moving to Vic from out of province, I quickly noticed the frequency with which people say that “there is nothing to do in Victoria,” which I found odd because up until last March I took in poorly attended concerts and events all the time. I’m sure that any Camosun student understands that this is why your favourite band doesn’t come to town. We can’t wait for the community to provide everything for us, because we are the community. I strongly encourage all students and faculty, when the college opens back up, to get out and attend a comedy event, a pub night, or a Chargers game, or we will lose these opportunities moving forward.

4: Camosun needs to provide student housing
In recent years, the housing crisis has grown steadily worse, and students are a vulnerable group because of the temporary (and often precarious) nature of their living situation. The population will continue to grow, and vacancy rates will fall again. Camosun must address this problem. The time for talking has come and gone. This should have been addressed years ago.

5: Provide better parking options
Students have enough on their plates without worrying about getting a parking ticket if they stay to talk to their instructor after class. We all understand that the college needs to keep their finances in order, but there must be a friendlier way than to contract Robbins as the parking watchdog.

Jayden Grieve, contributing writer
1: Replace the stuff they serve at the Lansdowne cafeteria with food
Aramark—who runs the Lansdowne cafeteria—is an American company whose inflated prices and deflated portions do not harmonize with the student lifestyle. This isn’t a criticism of the cafeteria employees, who I find very amicable and who are doing their best with what they’re working with. We’re destitute students: give us opportunities for success, don’t let heartless corporations milk us of our student loans and part-time job earnings.

2: Adopt open-source textbooks and expand the library holds section
You’ll pay $200 for your texts for a third of your classes and end up cracking them open five times in the whole semester (that’s $40 a pop). The entire college should be putting itself on the track toward the universal employment of open-source textbooks. The textbook companies are a cabal who hold knowledge hostage. We have some incredibly knowledgeable teachers; I would say that it wouldn’t be a fantastical thought to propose that the college could fund some open-source textbook writing themselves. In the interim, the college should put some money into expanding the textbook reserve section in the library to include a book or two for every offered class.

3: Establish greater consistency among classes
A teacher you’ve never had could mark everything twice as harshly as another teacher for the same class, or provide absolutely no supplementary materials, or could seem really easy during lectures but when you take the midterm there’s a ton of material on there that they never once mentioned. Allowing teachers the freedom to teach classes in a way that works for them is important, but not at the expense of students. There needs to be a minimal guideline established for what resources are available and how the class will be. Students should always have textbook answer keys available, guidelines should be put in place for whether or not part marks are given and for which things, and a consistent method of whatever is being taught should be used so that when you take the next-level class you actually have a clue what the teacher is talking about.

4: The implementation of non-gendered washrooms
The arguments against gender-neutral washrooms are scant and unconvincing; these washrooms are an important step forward for equality. Currently the college’s answer is that they have made all of the single-stall washrooms on campus gender-neutral. So, the solution is to change all of the regular bathrooms into gender-neutral ones. Bam, done, no renovation needed. If someone feels uncomfortable or unsafe using these then they are able to use the private, single-stall washrooms.

5: Explain the reasoning behind electives
Everyone’s wondering: why do we have to take so many electives that are unrelated to our programs? The reasons for this should be explained to students. Additionally, students are often confused by how they’re supposed to fill the 200 or higher-level elective requirements for four-year programs when they’ve locked themselves into specific elective routes. This has actually been made simpler than it was when I started as a student many years ago, but I think both of these problems could be solved by a simple “Guide to Electives” page on the college’s website, which would explain why they are required, lay out various paths that are generally available, and suggest electives that could be complementary to various programs.

Nicolas Ihmels, contributing writer
1: Cheaper materials
College isn’t cheap, and students don’t have money: there’s no reason I can think of that students should cough up an extra $200 just so we can get our class material. It’s highway robbery. One of the things that Camosun must do to help get more butts behind desks is to make the class materials that the students need a heck of a lot cheaper.

2: Better printer maintenance
Too many times I’ve had to print out an essay and ran to the printer only to find that it’s either out of ink or has another valid excuse for not being able to print my work out. It would be extremely helpful if Camosun made printer maintenance more of a priority so that we can get things printed on time with no hassle.

3: Healthier choices in all vending machines
Don’t get me wrong—candy bars and chips are great snacks and taste way better than peas and carrots, but are they helping us stay focused on our studies? No. While the sugar from your pop and chocolate may give you a temporary boost of energy, it can also led to sugar crashes and eventual mind-numbing fatigue. It will be far more helpful for students to have more energy-friendly options in the campus vending machines.

4: Camosun pet centre
Both our pets and neighbours suffer when we spend too much time at the college instead of with our beloved furry friends. Luckily, I have a solution to this: Camosun’s pet centre. Camosun could build an indoor pet sanctuary that would be a daycare for pets, so students can visit their furry loved ones any time after class. As an added bonus, this will also help with the cats wandering around the Lansdowne campus.

5: Doughnut Mondays
Mmm…. doughnuts. Everybody loves this sweet, tasty treat that people have in business meetings all the time, so why not have them in college classes? Introducing Camosun’s new Doughnut Mondays! It’s a very simple idea: every Monday, a student from each class is assigned doughnut duty, meaning that they are in charge of getting the doughnuts for their class. This will, unfortunately, result in the repeal of any no-food-in-class rules, but doughnuts are so deliciously good that it would be well worth it.

Celina Lessard, contributing writer
1: Update Camlink to be more user-friendly
Let’s face it: Camlink looks like an out-of-date webpage that hasn’t been updated since 2001. It has an extremely confusing layout for new users, and the hoops you have to jump through in order to do anything are completely unnecessary. Registering in courses and paying deposits should be way easier than they currently are. It’s time for a complete remodelling of Camlink.

2: The Interurban library needs a greater collection of fiction books
As any avid reader knows, books are an awesome escape from reality. The fiction section (or, the “for fun” section, as I call it) is small at the Interurban library and provides little variety in genres. Reading is a gift, and in order to make sure it’s available to everyone, we should increase the college’s amount of fiction works.

3: Add more time slots or teachers to the Writing Centre
The Camosun Writing Centre is a valuable resource to get students the help they need with papers, speeches, or written assignments. The only downside (online, anyway) is that the time slots are almost always full. Getting more teachers or creating more opportunities for students to connect with teachers would definitely help out during exam seasons.

4: Establish a common layout for online classes
When you’re in full-time studies, having each class use a different layout can be confusing. Each teacher hides the notes, due dates, and worksheets in a different place—it’s astonishingly easy to lose track of things. Having a common layout shared across classes would make it a lot easier to stay aware of the important things. Online classes suck, but the organization of these classes doesn’t have to.

5: Release Adobe Creative Cloud to all students
Previously, every student had the ability to opt-in to Office 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud to help with schoolwork. This was extremely useful for creating documents, working on photos or videos, and establishing a portfolio. Recently, Camosun changed this so that only certain programs have access to Adobe services. Having this opportunity dismantled totally ruins the ability to be creative and have more options with schoolwork. In a time of online classes, we should be given more access to programs, not less. Camosun needs to reinstate the opt-in service for Adobe products.

Adam Marsh, student editor
1: Renovate Lansdowne
Travelling between the two campuses, the first thing that always comes to my mind is how they look and feel like two completely different institutions. At some point, Lansdowne will need to be gutted—either fully demolished (don’t do that, please) or renovated and repaired from the bottom up. The look and feel of the two campuses being so different might seem like a small thing; it’s not.

2. Offer micro-housing for students
Demand for online learning will mean that classrooms won’t be used to the same extent they were in the past. Even a small amount of free classrooms—say, 15 total—can and should go a long way toward student lodgings. Think of the size of the average dorm room: pretty small, but a nice temporary residence for a student. Combined with a quarterly fee for breakfast and dinner at the cafeteria, plus creating more jobs for those running the tills at night (or creating the robots that will) and dorm staff? It’s a win-win. The costs of those fees wouldn’t be small, but they would be in comparison to the cost of living in the outside world in 15 years time.

3. Get two massive fish tanks in the libraries
The therapeutic results of fish tanks are immense. Fish tanks are the only good part of the going to the dentist, so it couldn’t hurt to have some on campus.

4. Turn a portion of the library into a self-care amusement park
As technology demands that we move at a faster and faster pace, so too will the demand rise for on-the-go self-care. I’m thinking $2 massage chairs; I’m thinking weighted blankets for rent. A float tank for $5 bucks a pop with a valid student ID. Ozone therapy for $15. I’m thinking hot yoga with… Siri? These things sound completely wild, and would have large upfront and ongoing upkeep costs, but, especially with students living on campus, would be paid for within a relatively short time.

5. One-stop-shop app
Having one place students can go to—that they actually know about—for everything on campus is essential.

Samara Oscroft, contributing writer
1: Update Camlink
Listen, I get it. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right? Wrong. I’m a millennial, so I know how to work a website that was clearly designed in 1995, but I’m aging out! Updates are needed.

2: More gender-neutral bathrooms
Camosun just revamped the bathrooms in Lansdowne, and yet most of those bathrooms are still binarized. In the next 50 years, Camosun must make their commitment to queer, trans, and two-spirit students louder and more visible.

3: More vegetarian options
Lansdowne has so much to offer, but there is room for improvement in—and this is important—tasty vegetarian options for food on campus, especially for those of us who study better at school and are willing to burn the midnight oil.

4: Camosun needs to get more information out there
Did you know you can get a massage from a Camosun student for $10 with your student card? How about that you can book empty classrooms to study in? In the next 50 years, Camosun has got to make information about the many services available for students more accessible so that those attending the college get the most out of their time here.

5: Better accessibility
While busing works for me, I recognize that not every student has that ability. Camosun should either help figure out how to ensure that all students are able to use buses or at least not cause undue burden on those who can’t by forcing them to pay for parking.

Catryanna Sembaliuk, contributing writer
1: Animal therapy
The college should make it so students have more contact with dogs on campus, to be able to take a little time to boost up that serotonin level before heading into a class. Your mind switches from being stressed or overwhelmed to calm and connected while you’re petting an animal.

2: Gardens on campus
Building larger gardens on campus would be a way for us students to bond and get to know each other and form a community. It gets us outdoors and learning a little about the nature that surrounds us, as well.

3: Tell more alumni stories
Camosun has grown a lot since it was established. To be able to look back on all those students who have followed their dreams and made them into a reality is what motivates me to strive for that same success. Having that support and the backing from the school is very helpful and mindful to the future us. If I were to look 50 years into the future I would want to see where those minds went and how they were able to succeed, especially with all the obstacles and changes that have happened over time.

4: More pandemic knowledge
This past year has been hard on everyone, but we can learn from it. Maybe the college could do workshops about what the pandemic taught us and how we can keep using some of those cautionary measures, even after COVID-19 is behind us. I believe that becoming more self-aware is important for the future, so that next time we’re more informed about what to do.

5: More recreational activities
The college should keep its weights and gym equipment but also incorporate spin class, Zumba or yoga, or even self-defense training. This would be a way to focus on mental health as well as physical health, and also give students a chance to meet people on the same wavelength as them.

Emily Welch, contributing writer
1: Environmentally friendly buildings
Camosun should build carbon-neutral buildings that have biomatter or vegetation growing in gardens on the roof: any carbon expelled into the atmosphere would be returned back to the earth. Students in appropriate programs could tend to them.

2: Co-op housing for students
If the college had co-op housing on campus, students could look after each other as a community and be involved with co-op gardening, fixing their own homes, having their own council meetings, and solving their own issues as a group. Rent would be on a sliding scale depending on the student’s income and how much they contribute to the co-op community.

3: Resocializing classes
It will be difficult when COVID-19 ends to just jump back into a society that is close again. For a year after COVID, the college could offer groups that introduce people again, maybe to go walking or just sit close and talk to each other. Everyone could learn in this group how to shake hands or—gasp!—even hug a stranger again.

4: Get rid of the plastic
Lose all unnecessary plastic and have compostable cutlery and dishes in the cafeteria and other eateries on campus. Seems like a lot, but, seriously, we lived without plastic just fine until only about 70 years ago. It is so doable.

5: Have a weekly entertainment night
Having a weekly night where students can get together on campus to let out stresses through music, movies, discussion, poetry, or other art would go a long way to creating a vibrant student experience on campus. Have some good coffee and food, and no alcohol.

Emery Whitney, contributing writer
1: Improve Lansdowne cafeteria
The cafeteria at the Lansdowne Campus has very limited options, especially when it comes to healthy food. I’ve eaten that poutine far more than I care to admit. And not to mention the seating; I can never find a place to sit!

2: New chairs to lounge in
Speaking of places to sit—you know those chairs right at the back corner of the cafeteria that everybody wants to sit in? First of all, the fact that everyone wants to sit in these chairs says a lot about our seating situation, because those chairs have got to go! Can we please get rid of those torn-up black leather eyesores? We deserve some nice, untorn, comfortable chairs to sit in that corner; if everyone is secretly hoping to sit there, can they at least be decent? Please?

3: Lansdowne campus makeover
Not only do those chairs need a makeover, but the entire Lansdowne campus does, too. Why does it always feel like the gloomy transition from fall to winter whenever I’m there? It doesn’t matter what season it is—it’s always gloomy and uninviting, which makes getting through the semester a real drag sometimes.

4: Hire more Black and Indigenous instructors, in every department
I’ve been taking courses at Camosun part-time for quite some time, and I’ve only ever had one Indigenous professor, when I was taking an Indigenous Studies class. There should be more Indigenous and Black professors working in various departments at Camosun. Also, I hope to see more BIPOC representation among Camosun’s staff in general—especially in leading positions.

5: Start holding your staff accountable
I’ve had far too many instructors at Camosun College that have either been uninterested or just rude. Instructors need to be held accountable if they are not providing students with adequate education and/or respect. School is too expensive to receive mediocre education.