The University of Sydney’s Camperdown/Darlington campus sprawls widely, infiltrating a span of inner-west and inner-city suburbs. Within its many buildings are rooms upon rooms upon rooms, just waiting for students to fill them with incessant chatter and mutterings. Whilst some rooms are filled and emptied throughout the day like a bank account, others remain bankrupt, bereft of individuals inside their walls.
Of course, you’d expect this “world-class institution” to support the student experience and open its doors to students. In reality, students looking to book a room have door after door slammed in their face.
First stop: Resourcebooker
A student searching desperately for a space to call their club or society’s own (for a few hours) first turns to Resourcebooker. The name itself escapes sense, given that few would label a room a “resource”, and that is simply the first rung as the student descends a ladder of insanity. As 2024 Law Revue Producer Martha Barlow puts it, “Resourcebooker is quite frankly the bane of my existence.”
Resourcebooker has an impossibly labyrinthine interface, fusing the slowness of Goodreads with the pallor of Canvas. Students are directed to a page with a list of lecture theatres and seminar rooms, most of which are concentrated in the asbestos-side of campus. Bookings also need to be made on a case-by-case basis, so students have to painfully resubmit forms for bookings over multiple days. Rooms which are not listed often need to be booked via emails to the relevant faculty, a process which often reaps little reward.
This treacherous service lays multiple mouse traps that inadvertently snap a student’s room booking plans.
Firstly, bookings need to be submitted at least ten business days before the event. This necessitates significant pre-planning and foresight, often missing from student society executives as they juggle many other responsibilities.
A highly-organised student who lodges a booking early may be in for a rude awakening if they’d like to occupy a space on campus on the weekend. Resourcebooker has a fine print note that, “Any booking made on a weekend will incur a cleaning charge”. A student may not be deterred, assuming they have to throw a couple of dollars the university’s way given no cost is clearly stated. But make no mistake, the cleaning charge is a fixed rate of around $250 per day, meaning a society that wants to hold a weekend conference or rehearsal period is expected to cough up half a thousand just to sit in rooms collecting dust.
Escaping the ridiculous charge, perhaps a student settles for a midweek meeting. But Resourcebooker sinisterly devises new obstacles that evade reason and anticipation. Many of the rooms listed are booked out from 9am-6pm blanketly, even though they are empty if you dare knock on the door. To book a room on the platform, you need to be from a registered club or society — a requirement that an administrative agent diligently confirms. On two occasions this year, Honi Soit has had their event bookings cancelled on account that Honi is not a club or society, even though we are affiliated with the Students’ Representatives Council and serve students.
Next up: ClubSuite
As every campus life-wearied hack knows, many university spaces are owned by the University of Sydney Union (USU) rather than USyd, and therefore need to be booked via that route. Some USU rooms can be booked with less than two days’ notice via the society executive platform ClubSuite, but this also provides a host of issues for the room booker. The site was nonfunctional for significant portions of last year, and also caps booking times to two hours.
Many dance and movement societies were disappointed by the conversion of USU-owned dance studio Elliot Miller to a theatre for Conservatorium students; its underground replacement is inadequate for the needs of these societies due to its high insulation and stuffy atmosphere. Once the Footbridge theatre is fully renovated, there is suggestion it could be booked by students, but it remains engulfed in scaffolding for the foreseeable future.
Getting: desperate?
There are some slivers of hope for society executives who do not find success from the room booking platforms. The Sydney University Drama Society’s (SUDS) Cellar Theatre, tucked away under the Holme Building, can be booked for up to ten hours for no charge by USyd and external performing arts societies via a booking form. Of course, the ability to book is dependent on whether a SUDS show is active that requires the space.
Resigned and defeatist students in the past who have needed a large space for performing arts rehearsals (read: myself, unfortunately), have had to beg friends who live in nearby sharehouses to use their living rooms, or contact the affordable housing co-op Stucco to borrow their hall.
At one point, at the end of my rope, I neared close to booking a nearby Airbnb for a night, considering it would be cheaper than paying a weekend of USyd’s booking fees.
The ability for a student society executive to successfully nab a room is dependent on power and connections with contacts in the university, rendering it difficult for smaller societies to flourish. Famed USU clubs such as the Debating Society and some Revues are engaged personally with USU employees to organise their room bookings, relieving their executives of the discovery burden. For students who don’t have such contacts, their best bet is to occupy a space without a booking (and risk incurring a fee) or mingle among the public Courtyard rumpus. Grim!
