GUEST COLUMNIST: Lost in the Perelman Quad shuffle?

"Can I help you?" the less-than-pleased assistant to the executive assistant asked as I meandered into the reception area. "Hi, my name is Jared Miller," I said. "I am part of the?" Here, I paused, since the last peer-educator to approach Chodorow's headquarters got the Office of Health Education in trouble for not minding her own business. Her agenda was to find out what will happen to the third floor of Houston Hall when Perelman Quad renovations begin -- and where the Drug and Alcohol Resource Team (DART); Reach-A-Peer Helpline (RAPline); Student Health Advisory Board (SHAB); Guidance for Understanding Image, Dieting and Eating (GUIDE); Student Together Against Acquaintance Rape (STAAR); and my group, Facilitating Learning About Sexual Health (FLASH), will end up when the project is finished. She and the rest of Student Health wanted to know what will happen in two years, when the Perelman Quad's as-yet-undetermined "student space" is allocated to campus groups. But as she was just a student, she wasn't permitted access to this classified information. The problem is, it seems, that nobody knows what will go where or when the moves will happen. I needed to find out, but I didn't want to get FLASH in trouble, so I continued? "Part of the? student body? at large. I was wondering if I could please see the plans for the Perelman Quad?" "The wha??" she asked. "The Perelman Quad!" I said. "You know, the new student union we are getting from the Revlon people, where we will get new space for student groups?" "I know what it is," she replied. "What do you want the 'plans' for?" "I am an interested senior wondering what the provost has decided is best for the student body," I explained. At this point, she asked me who I was (again) and told me the provost was in a meeting right then with the Committee on Something or Other discussing? the Perelman Quad! He had the plans with him, but wasn't going to be done for 45 minutes. "There is only one copy of the plans?" I was both shocked and silently amused. Maybe if I could get my hands on the plans, I thought, I could very quickly scribble down a little amendment saying that nothing should happen to the location of the Office of Health Education. The receptionist was getting exasperated. "Listen, son, I will have the provost's executive assistant call you or e-mail you to answer any questions you may have about the plans, OK?" I thanked her and shuffled, disappointed, out the large oak door. The Office of Health Education is home base for about 200 students working to improve student health at Penn -- including members of RAPline and DART, who were recently stripped of their office in the Christian Association and forced to squeeze into one corner of our already-overcrowded space. Student Health has no room for us, nor do we want to be that far from campus. We provide the Penn community with information about personal health and wellness, facilitate numerous and diverse workshops, bring great speakers to campus and sponsor activities about eating disorders, rape prevention, safer sex and AIDS awareness and drug and alcohol abuse. Without centralized staffing and office space, in an accessible location, we couldn't make all of these programs happen. Maybe the provost is just waiting for caring and health-conscious students to graduate, so that he can start the new millennium without giving future generations of Quakers a place to voice concerns about Student Health or to figure out what personal health choices are best. Maybe we will stay where we are, in Houston Hall, but right now, everything is very uncertain. I have heard rumors that alumni who give an enormous amount of money will choose the student groups that receive certain spaces within Perelman Quad. I have also heard there will be rotation of space from year to year between various student groups. We deserve an answer. Unless Chodorow would like to call the new complex a provost union, we would like to know where student groups will be in the Perelman Quad. After all, I never did see the "plans" he was looking at that day -- and I was never contacted about discussing them.