STV’s latest drama: The Student Union must compensate STV for lost studio space

At bare minimum, the Student Union owes Student Television an apology for splitting its space in the multipurpose room. But that’s not all STV deserves. After sinking $30,000 into transforming the room into a functional studio, STV must now begin anew with a renovation that could prove more costly than the first. The Union must reimburse STV for a move that deprived the group not only of studio space but of a voice in the decision, as well.

That shouldn’t be an issue, so long as the marketing and design department is generating as much revenue as the Union says it is.

In defending the Carolina Union Board of Directors’ unanimous vote this week, Union Director Don Luse said the marketing and design department required a larger office space because of ballooning demand for promotional materials like banners and fliers. This demand from student organizations, the Division of Student Affairs and the Union itself grew from 53 projects in 2008-09 to 243 in 2009-10, or by 358 percent.

The move to the multipurpose room wasn’t the marketing and design department’s first choice, either. Phase two of the UCommons renovation would have provided the department a new office elsewhere in the Union — but the referendum to provide funding was not approved.

The phase two failure was tied in no small part to the UCommons campaign strategy spearheaded by none other than the marketing and design department, whose petitioning practices and placement of campaign materials violated campus election rules last year.

That irony comes a close second to the miscommunication, or lack of communication, that led up to the Union board’s vote. STV station manager Sydney Holt said she was told of the Union’s plans only offhandedly in August, several weeks after the Union met with architects to decide on the multipurpose room as the best option for the marketing and design department.

Luse said he notified STV of the Union’s plans at the beginning of the summer, adding that the station never informed him of how it would be spending the $30,000.

Regardless of what, when or whether both sides communicated, it’s clear that coordination was lacking. Had STV been notified sooner, Holt said she would have been willing to give up the station’s separate office and have a one functional space rather than two “half usable” spaces, which now give the station more space than any other group in the Union.

That separate office, where the station stores much of its equipment, may not have met the marketing and design department’s preferences or size demands. But considering it as an option could have at least opened a dialogue before it was too late.

Luse was unsure as to how STV was spending the $30,000. Other than a few lights, he said there are few signs of any STV renovations in the multipurpose room. Better communication with STV would have informed him that the $30,000 was not spent on equipment but rather making the multipurpose room functional for existing equipment.

Holt said those renovations are rendered useless by the Union board’s decision. Now, STV has to start over with a renovation that could be more expensive because the smaller space provides less existing infrastructure. No matter the final expense, the smaller space won’t be wide enough to enable high-definition broadcasting, as STV had hoped the full multipurpose room would.

To their credit, Union board members have acknowledged that this result wasn’t ideal.

Even with skyrocketing demand, Luse said the department doesn’t turn a profit, though the revenue does fend off student fees and provide students a less expensive option for promoting their groups, events and causes. With this, the board had reason to believe that this move would best serve the student body. But that reasoning cannot be an excuse for robbing STV of 65 percent of its space, especially after making such a steep investment with the understanding of future use.

The damage has been done from this vote. STV and the Union should learn from it to communicate and strike a compromise that achieves some measure of damage control.