Let's Make Our Learning Institute More 'ACTIVE'

By saying that, I mean let's get it more involved with us students and definitely with outside world. How many if you feel that our institute isn't much of a fun place to be? What is it lacking? Well it has come to my concern that many of our students like to work in school for hours to get the most work done. I am in EV and our biggest core studio project of all was due yesterday; so more than half of the 2nd year EV students were working in school on the whole day monday. They were deperate, exhausted, frustrated, sleepy and what not. Students were running around from wood shop to working space on 5th floor and with their laptops. In this case, where you stay in school and work ALL day long, don't you feel like taking a 10/15 mind break every two hours or so and do something fun, which would refresh you and you mind and help you concentrate on work more?
So I thought may be OCAD could take an initiative to manage a gym, a yoga place and a place for small sports activities in this building. We should have atleast one transforming space to manage these activities. We are all designers here so I am sure this won't be a problem if we take the initiative. One of the classrooms or may be a gallary, a storage room could be transformed into gym permanently since the equipments could be a problem to move around. Most of other universities have gym where students become a member and can come anytime they want! So why not ours? And may be OCAD could give outsiders an oppurtinity to become a member, and get helped financially.
There's a study room on second floor at the left corner of the cafe. It's usually empty, calm and not many students visit the room, so why not tranforming it into a yoga place and also arrange some fun sports at times? Depending on the time when studetns have more study pressure, we can keep tranforming the space into two of these activities. Well we have study area on 5th and 6th floor, 4th level of Annex building and the library itself, so taking up another area won't be a big deal in my opinion. X-space could be another option to arrange them. I am sure many of us feel the need of these in our community when students from others institues talk about theirs.

And then OCAD could be highly involved with the outside world through us students. HOW? Well as you may have noticed many of the universities, York, UofT, Ryerson has different student associations who get occupied in various community works, volunteering etc wether its in Canada or other part of world. There are also cultural associations who organize different cultural shows and keep it open for anyone and everyone to come and in a way they get financial help to give out to various charity world wide. OCAD could be a part of these activities. I have noticed that almost all of my friends don't have any clue that a school by name even exists. THIS is an oppurtunity to let the outsiders know that we exist. We students have to take the permission and take the initiative to create such associations to help out charities, help out the countries who need our help by organizing shows, concerts, cultural exhibitions etc.
There was a terrible and one of the strongest cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh last month and more than 3,000 people died, and numeruos people became homeless!!! In this case, in my concern, OCAD took no step to gather funds to help Bangladesh, may be because they don't have the right circumstances whereas Ryerson arranged a concert, York and UofT asked everyone around them for help. I had to be a part of them to become a help for my own conntry and I felt really bad about my own OCAD not having such associations. So I realized that we as a student have to take these steps and this might as well help us to be known to others who we are unknown to. It's a benifit for all.

So, let ourselves have fun in our own community and let's help OCAD getting even more active in every other way as much as can; apart from art and designing world.

Thank You
Farah