On February 4th, 2026, students received an email saying that VTSU administration was looking into leasing the Harvey Academic Center to a “new community collaborator.” Harvey Academic Center, or HAC for short, is the vibrant center of VTSU - Lyndon’s art department and Outdoor Education, Leadership, and Tourism (OELT) department. These departments require specific equipment to be successful. For the OELT department, they use the basement of HAC to store outdoor equipment such as sea kayaks, snow-go bikes, ropes equipment, and more. For the art department, they have expensive computers and drawing tablets that are necessary to complete assignments, which require their own classroom that needs to be used by only art majors to protect and preserve the equipment. They also have specialized printers, drawing labs, a photography dark room, a resource room, The Quimbly Art Gallery and more which all have a current home in HAC. 

The worry many Lyndon students have is that there simply is not enough space in the other campus buildings to store equipment necessary for the OELT department or give the art department their necessary spaces they deserve to have the best learning environment possible. By moving both departments to the main campus buildings, all educational departments will be affected by this change. Furthermore, HAC is the most accessible building on our campus which raises further concerns, especially because Lyndon has had a history with elevators breaking down or accessible doors being locked. 

In my 4 years here I have noticed a pattern of dismissal of the students body, the power of our student governments on each campus, and outright exclusion in vital decision making processes that affect our students directly and not the people making these new policies and major decisions. We have been more than happy to be kind and collaborative in many of these changes. We have lost our traditions, our spaces, our programs, our professors, our majors, and we have even been at risk of losing our graduation. Our student body is patient, but our patience has limits and I confidently can say I am speaking for everyone from our campus and even other campus when I say that this was an unacceptable way to handle this.