Global Dialogue Center Changes
St. Lawrence University plans to move Global Dialogue Center to a new building, raising concerns from Global Studies faculty and students.
Dr. Sandhya Ganapathy, chair of the Global Studies Department, said that many valuable aspects of the current GDC building could be lost as the space moves. “There is something unique about this space,” she said. “Architecturally, the building is a house. But it also an intellectual home and gathering space for a diverse array of students from across campus. The fact that it has a kitchen allows for creative co-curricular activities. For example, the Arabic culture club had a za’atar bread making workshop. There are lots of different resources. The space is adaptable, and it’s open to anybody – folks who want to use the space can use the space.”
As Ganapathy sees it, the Gender and Sexuality Studies building, which is to be the GDC’s new home, will not be able to support the same activities that the current building can. The new building will have less space and no kitchen. It will have to accommodate not only student activities but also faculty from both the Global Studies department and Gender and Sexuality Studies, as well as faculty teaching in the Firt-Year Program and Digital Media and Film.
Ganapathy felt that the university administration communicated with her minimally about the GDC moving. “Nothing was made definitive, except until about three weeks before the start of the semester, which was, to me, not an ideal or appropriate amount of time,” she said. “I’m getting ready for classes and teaching a new class and doing various administrative things, and then this was kind of laid on my lap.” The administration initially wanted the GDC to move in those first three weeks before the semester. If it had moved at that time frame, Facilities Operations would not have been able to have the building ready for new occupants in such a short time frame, meaning that the actively used space would have sat empty, according to Ganapathy.
As to why the GDC is moving or what the space will be used for next, University Vice President and Academic Dean Alison Del Rossi has not yet responded to comment. Ganapathy still has no clear answers to those questions. She said that there was “some talk about student housing,” but nothing conclusive. She doesn’t believe that the layout of the space is better suited to its current use than it would be for housing.
Along with cooking and a temporary art studio, there are a wide array of other ways that students and faculty use the current building, according to Ganapathy. There are three faculty offices on the second floor. The first floor is regularly used by students as a study space, for club meetings, workshops and group activities. Ganapathy has also used it for class activities, including a pop-up art gallery for students in her “Art, Activism and Environment class,” which she said was not only valuable academically but also served as a campus event that brought students from other disciplines in to connect with the space. Other professors have conducted classes in the building, and students from not only the Global Studies program, but also other programs and communities across campus use the GDC for meetings, study sessions, and club meetings, according to Ganapathy. A group of students is planning a Halloween trick-or-treating activity at the GDC this year. “It’s used both for community building educational purposes and also spaces where, like, community and education intersect,” she said.
The GDC’s walls are home to multiple student paintings; the kitchen became a gallery for one student’s summer painting projects when she needed somewhere to showcase them. A ceiling-high shelf holds a collection of homemade zines that students created as part of using art and “interdisciplinary, Global Studies, decolonial frameworks to understand pressing, contemporary environmental issues.” One visitor to the GDC during a gallery saw a zine about addiction recovery and took a copy for a friend who was in the process of recovery. Ganapathy said that the amount of space in the current building not only makes these exhibits more feasible but also allows for more comfortable space in which students can socialize outside the classroom. “It’s part of the institution, but it’s not really an institutional space in terms of the architecture, in terms of the control [it gives students],” she said. “It’s very open. And, you know, it’s really whatever – whatever students need to work through, they can work through it in spaces like this.”
Annika Jensen ’27, a Global Studies major, said that she uses the GDC to study and do homework. “I grew up always doing homework in my kitchen at my house, so it helps to have a building that resembles that kind of study space,” she said. Global Studies major Ananya Maddipatla ’27 was a Global Studies campus intern last semester and spent much of her time working in the GDC. “It’s just this really quiet, healthy space,” she said.
While an injury has prevented him from using the space as much as other Global Studies majors, Nathan Inecia ’26 said that he still values it as a place to study and meet with faculty. He finds it confusing that the space is moving. “It seems a bit weird,” he said, comparing the Gender and Sexuality Studies building to the current GDC. “Because if you looked – if you enter that space today – you would see that it’s not the same.”