By Joe Cox, MDXSU Vice President Art & Design and Media & Performing Arts

During my election last year, one of the main things that students brought up to me was that the Grove building - the building that students in the faculty of Arts and Creative Industries spend most of their time in - should be open 24 hour.

I made it a key part of my manifesto, and since I started as an MDXSU Vice President in July I’ve been working on it as a key priority.

There are a huge number of reasons why I believe that the Grove building should have more 24 hour access, but the main one for me is that it goes a long way to tackling the inequality on campus between creative students and everyone else.

If you study a course that only requires access to books and computers then you have 24 hour access to learning; you can go to the library at any time that you need and do some work.

If you are a creative student who needs access to specialist areas, like Digital Media Workstations or flat-surface performance spaces, then you can only work before 10pm, after that your areas are closed and your work has to stop.

Not only is it massively unfair, it also limits the level of access that creative students have to other aspects of university life. If you have 24 hour access to your studies you can happily go to a society meeting or an MDXSU House Party in the evening knowing that you can just go back to the library afterwards and carry on working. If you’re a creative student it’s much harder to take that time when you know that you won’t be able to continue working afterwards. We have to equalise the treatment of students on campus, and 24 hour Grove is a big step towards that.

With that in mind, this year I have been working with staff at the university in order to solve this problem. While I have had many helpful suggestions from students calling for a sit-in, a boycott, or even walkouts from classes, I still strongly believe that we should always have a conversation first and try to solve this issue without escalating the situation. As a testament to that, I have some good news.

I am so happy to announce that Grove B, the second largest building in the Grove complex, now has 24 hour access for the music students who are based there. After working with your music department and the leadership of the new faculty we’ve made it happen and it is now active: music students can now use Grove B at any time of the day or night.

Obviously, this isn’t the end of our campaign - this is merely the beginning. We must now turn our focus to other parts of the Grove and strive to make sure that as many students have as much access as possible.

I have already begun discussions with faculty leadership about moving Grove C, with its theatre and dance spaces, to a 24 hour schedule, and we are also looking at areas in Grove A (the main Atrium building), such as Digital Media Workstations, and the possibility of getting 24 hour access there.

Solving this campus inequality problem is absolutely my number one concern this year. I want creative students to be treated the same way as every other student at Middlesex, and I’ll keep fighting for that as long as I’m in this position.

If you’d like to talk to me about my campaign to get creative students 24 hour access to their spaces, or my wider campaign to achieve campus equality, please either send me an email at j.l.cox@mdx.ac.uk or come to the Students’ Union, downstairs in MDX House, where we can sit down and have a chat.