Several students groups have expressed dissatisfaction with the Danforth University Center, specifically complaining that the new building does not hold sufficient space for them.

Director of Student Activities Julie Thornton, however, claims that 12 to 18 months are needed to work out the flaws in every new building. Student perceptions of the Danforth University Center (DUC), she believes, will improve as the University corrects those flaws.

“Whatever opinions people have now will change over time as we work out the kinks of the building,” Thornton said.

Phyllis Jackson, the assistant director of Event Services, agrees with Thornton.

“Right now, just because it is a new facility, there are some policy issues that need to be worked out,” Jackson said.

Performance student groups feel especially affected by what they view as the lack of space in the DUC, which hinders their opportunities to hold practices and rehearsals.

The South Asian student organization Ashoka, which hosts its Diwali performance every winter in the Edison Theatre, is one of those groups.

“Although Ashoka loves the DUC and what it has to offer the campus, to be honest, it doesn’t provide much use for us as a student group,” Ashoka Co-President and junior Kashyap Tadisina said.

According to Thornton, student groups that perform annually in the Edison Theatre or require rehearsal space will naturally have issues with the architecture of the DUC.

“What we have [in the DUC] are meeting rooms,” Thornton said.

Ashoka acknowledges the fact that the DUC is primarily used as a meeting area and that the group still remains mostly reliant on the Mallinckrodt Center for rehearsal space.

“We can only use [the DUC] for executive meetings,” Tadisina said. “The spaces don’t lend themselves to our uses as well as Mallinckrodt does.”

Tadisina says that the Gargoyle and the food court in Mallinckrodt are good spaces for performance practices.

“It also provides a center to access Edison Theatre, whether it is during ticket sales or during the days of the Diwali performance,” he said. “As of right now, the DUC is off-limits for dancing in their rooms, so if we lose Mallinckrodt and all of its practice spaces and don’t add other spaces, we are at a loss as far as where to prepare for a student-run production such as Diwali.”

The former food court in Mallinckrodt is easily converted into a rehearsal space, since the room is already furnished with wooden floors and mirrors on the walls. Some spaces also remain available in the Wohl Center, where Diwali’s hip-hop dancers practice every weekend for their performance.

The University has future plans to renovate Mallinckrodt, but the yearlong period for those renovations may cause problems for student groups such as Ashoka. The reconstruction plans, however, include preserving the space in the Gargoyle.

Thornton says that the DUC, unlike Mallinckrodt, was never built to serve as a space for rehearsals. She said that comparing the two buildings is like “comparing apples to oranges.”

According to Jackson, many student groups have reserved spaces in the DUC for general body meetings. Likewise, many groups have used the commons area for larger events, such as a function hosted by the Society of Women Engineers.

DUC has also seen significant tabling by student groups, and the Dance Marathon student group has made use of the patio in the northeast corner courtyard.

Despite complaints, Thornton believes that the school is still at a “better place than where we once were.”

Already this school year, Student Union hosted a session where student groups could give feedback on the DUC; more than 200 student group presidents attended.

According to Thornton, groups voiced a significant amount of constructive criticism. Since the session, several changes have been made to the DUC and more information has been distributed on how to take advantage of its resources.

“Overall, we love the DUC, what it offers to the students [and] its place on campus, but do not feel that it is a replacement by any means for Mallinckrodt,” Tadisina said.