Hiring a new faculty member in spring 2016 proved to be more complicated than initially expected for the drama and dance department. Housed in Aidekman Arts Center, the department needed to find additional office space for the new faculty member, which appeared to be nonexistent in Aidekman.
“[Aidekman] is literally at capacity,” Heather Nathans, the chair of the drama and dance department, said. “We … went through the building multiple times to try to see what might be reallocated internally, assuming nobody was going to build us a new wing to the building.”
Nathans joked about the building's options, or lack thereof.
“We were opening rooms where we'd say, ‘Well, there's a lot of steam pipes in here and a water heater, but I don't know, maybe?’” she said.
Eventually, a storage closet, Aidekman 008, was identified as the best option for the necessary office space. This closet was where the student percussion group Bangin' Everything at Tufts (B.E.A.T.s) kept its drumming equipment and supplies, including buckets, a ladder and old street signs.
A new search for space
Though B.E.A.T.s was asked to move its belongings elsewhere in order to accommodate office space for the new drama and dance department faculty member Kareem Khubchandani, the room switch was not direct, Joe Golia, director of the Office for Campus Life, said.
Rather, according to Nathans, the Department of Drama and Dance and the Department of Art and Art History negotiated a switch with the help of Tufts' space management team, in which Khubchandani moved into Aidekman003 – the room that Art and Art History teaching assistants (TAs) had been using – while the TAs moved into the former B.E.A.T.s closet, Aidekman 008.
This switch allowed Khubchandani to have an office that was in a row with other drama and dance department faculty offices, Nathans said.
For B.E.A.T.s, losing access to the closet meant not only the loss of a convenient storage space, but also the loss of a group tradition, B.E.A.T.s president Jessie Hoffman explained.
“[The closet] was … kind of like a spot where we would convene before practices, before any show that we had," Hoffman, a sophomore, said. "So it was kind of our meeting place, and it was definitely a tradition in the B.E.A.T.s history and culture."
While B.E.A.T.s has used the closet for several years, it was initially an open space that the group claimed unofficially, according to Golia.
“[The closet] was empty [many years ago], [and B.E.A.T.s] took it," Golia said. "Nobody is blaming them, nobody is saying they did anything wrong, because we knew they had it … but it was never given to B.E.A.T.s.”
The fact that B.E.A.T.s even had its own closet for this many years, Golia added, was a luxury, given how many student groups desire storage space.
“I have one group a week at least walk into my office and ask me for storage space," he said. "That's how many student organizations are desperate for storage space, and we've got nothing to give them. So an organization that has space, I don't care where it is, they're pretty lucky.”
Golia said that he contacted the members of B.E.A.T.s in June to inform them that they could no longer use the closet. According to Golia, he and B.E.A.T.s worked together to figure out a date for the group members to move their equipment before the renovations began that would transform the storage closet into an office space.
During this time, however, only a few B.E.A.T.s members were still on campus, according to Hoffman.
“We were kind of scrambling to figure out who was gonna move the stuff,” she said.
Golia said that after losing access to Aidekman008, B.E.A.T.s was given temporary access to a storage space behind the Green Room in Cohen Auditorium. However, this storage space was difficult to access, Hoffman said, as the B.E.A.T.s members had to call Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) to unlock the room whenever they needed their equipment.
For this reason, since the start of this semester, B.E.A.T.s had been leaving its equipment in Aidekman012, the room in which it practices, according to B.E.A.T.s member Josh Berl.
For the long term, Campus Planner and Project Manager Colin Simmons found a space in the basement of Harleston Hall where B.E.A.T.s can now keep its equipment. According to Simmons, this space is larger than Aidekman008 and will provide B.E.A.T.s with more storage room than it had before.
But Hoffman countered that, as of now, the basement of Harleston is not an ideal spot for B.E.A.T.s’ belongings.
“It's not near where we practice at all, it's not centrally located on campus, and also we don't really have swipe access for later when we actually practice to get into [Harleston]," she said. "So we haven't moved any of our stuff down there yet."
However, according to Golia, there is a possibility that the members of B.E.A.T.s will be able to change where they practice from Aidekman012 to the basement of Harleston, thus minimizing the issue of convenience. This change is contingent on whether the noise from practice sessions will carry upstairs to the residence hall itself, Golia said.
“[B.E.A.T.s] need[s] to go practice and I need to be upstairs in [Harleston] and see if it causes any problems," Golia said. "If they can practice in there and their sound does not carry through the residence hall, then they're going to be in great shape because they can literally practice across the hall from their closet.”
Losing more than just a closet
The lack of a convenient space for B.E.A.T.s to store their equipment proved to be a bigger problem than initially anticipated for the group, which arrived at around 6 p.m. on Sept. 16, in Aidekman012 to find that its equipment and supplies were no longer there, according to Berl.
After contacting TUPD, Golia and Facilities Services in an attempt to figure out where their equipment had gone, Berl said a few members of B.E.A.T.s went to the Facilities office to see what had happened.
The drummers were informed that someone had filed a work order with Facilities regarding “junk” in Aidekman012 that they believed should be removed.
According to Steve Nasson, senior facilities director, this work order had been filed on Sept. 8 by someone associated with the Tufts University Art Gallery. In the work order, this person asked Facilities to both dispose of “junk” and replace the lightbulb in Aidekman 012 in preparation for a class that would be meeting in that room. Facilities removed the “junk” -- B.E.A.T.s’ equipment -- on the following Friday, Sept. 16, Nasson said.
Berl said that B.E.A.T.s has since purchased about $150 of equipment to replace some of what had been lost.
Nasson had not been informed of the incident prior to the Daily’s contacting him. He quickly offered compensation for any mistake made on the part of Facilities.
“If it was something we did, I’m happy to reimburse [B.E.A.T.s],” Nasson said.
According to Nasson, a small amount of B.E.A.T.s’ equipment – specifically some of their buckets – may still be in Facilities' possession, in which case B.E.A.T.s could get it back.
"We will return [the buckets] to their rightful owners," he said.
Still, most of B.E.A.T.s’ equipment has already been thrown away, according to Nasson.
Despite losing their closet and then their equipment, Berl said that B.E.A.T.s has taken it all in stride.
“Right now, we don’t really blame facilities or [the Office for Campus Life] or the [study group] that used the room … There are some things that are gone forever and we will probably never be able to replace exactly what we had, but the rest is [comprised of] trash and we will be fine,” Berl told the Daily in an electronic message. “[Hoffman], as well as the other members of B.E.A.T.s who were working hard to find our stuff, did a fantastic job handling this mess.”
True to its acronym, B.E.A.T.s hopes that it will be back to “bangin' everything at Tufts” in no time.
“B.E.A.T.s is resilient, and we are going to keep playing everything we can with what we have and what we can get our hands on,” Berl said.
Office space shortage
According to Lois Stanley, Director of Campus Planning, lack of office space at Tufts is a concern that extends beyond the drama and dance department and student organizations such as B.E.A.T.s. The university is working to address the problem by fully utilizing the campus’ new buildings, such as the Collaborative Learning and Innovation Complex (CLIC) at 574 Boston Ave. and the Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) currently being built, she said.
By following more specific parameters for office space and increasing shared space in these new buildings, Stanley explained, concerns regarding lack of office space can be alleviated.
“Knowing that we have office crunches everywhere, we went into [CLIC] with some space-use guidelines … For the occupant groups in CLIC … the going-in rule was that [only] full-time faculty get private offices,” she said. “When you shift the definition of who requires an office, then you're less likely to get to the office crunch as quickly as we have elsewhere.”
Rather than establish additional private offices, the CLIC features shared spaces for collaboration, as well as “huddle rooms” for one or two people that can be reserved online, Stanley said, when people need a private space for a meeting or even just for themselves.
The balance between storage space and office space is a difficult one to strike, according to Stanley. While storage space has few requirements, office space has more specific needs.
“Storage can be almost anywhere, but you do want it to be something you can access … so that it's easy to deliver storage to and from," she said. "[For] offices, we like folks to have direct or indirect light, so [for] storage, we have more possibilities.”
Yet the former B.E.A.T.s closet and new TA office, as well as Khubchandani’s new office, lack this natural light, according to Nathans.
Stanley acknowledged that the basement in Aidekman, though renovated over the summer, is less than ideal for office space.
“[The drama and dance department is] very, very squeezed … [It’s] not the sort of community one would like, so they already are compromised in terms of office space,” she said. “It sounds a little bit odd to create an office for faculty out of a closet … [but] we really needed to accommodate an incoming faculty [member].”
Though storage is important, Stanley said that it is difficult to prioritize storage over office space.
“I think people do come first, particularly full-time faculty, full-time students [and] full-time administrators,” she said.
While new buildings on campus are being designed with the goal of maximizing office space, older buildings such as Aidekman may be difficult to expand upon. According to Nathans, throughout the past few decades, several offices in Aidekman have been divided into multiple offices in order to increase office space.
However, Nathans believes that the need for more offices reflects the vitality of a flourishing department.
“We're lucky to be growing … and if the worst or the most painful part of that growth is, ‘Oh, we're a little squeezed for the time being until we can build enough buildings to catch up with our growth,’ then we'll deal with that,” she said. “But I think it's really exciting that we're growing, we're adding faculty [and] we're able to offer more to students.”
Limited on-campus space leaves academic departments, student organizations scrambling
