By Madeleine Scypinski
Counseling, Health & Wellness Services (CHWS) has been located on the second floor of Wheelock Student Center since the early ‘80s, but in recent years, it has become increasingly clear that CHWS is outgrowing this space.
“If you gave me money for a staff member,” CHWS Director Donn Marshall said, “we wouldn’t have any place to put that staff member.”
This exact scenario played out last year when the department hired a temporary counselor for 16 hours a week, which forced Marshall to move to an auxiliary office so the part-time hire could use his.
As CHWS struggles against space limitations to expand the resources they provide, newly empty Warner Gym is becoming an attractive option. Warner maintains its gym space and indoor hitting cages, and remains open to a number of intramural sports. However, following the opening of the new Athletics and Aquatics Center, the Athletics Department no longer has a use for the ergometer room or the building’s office spaces.
“Warner Gym has enough space that it could accommodate a much larger footprint for a counseling and health services,” Marshall said. In a building Warner’s size, many other interested groups would be able to share the space as well. According to their Demands, the Advocates for Institutional Change are interested in using Warner Gym for a Cultural Center, which would give the multitude of identity and faith-based groups on campus space for “cultural events and programming, club meetings, a kosher kitchen, and a lounge.”
One alternative option for CHWS would be to extend their wing of Wheelock further behind the building into the space currently occupied by the print shop; both plans are speculative at this point, but either would fulfill CHWS’s needs, even down to ambulance accessibility.
CHWS will take this step within the next couple of years. “Whether it’s one of these two spaces, or whether some other location emerges in that time,” Marshall said, “we need to expand CHWS services, and to expand the services we need to expand the space.”
A move would not only increase the space available to CHWS, but would also represent Puget Sound’s commitment to building a supportive community for its students.
The process to petition for use of Warner is in its infancy, but Anna Goebel, co-president of Puget Sound’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), remains optimistic. “For now we’re just putting it out there that we as a student group that cares about mental health think that this is a good option,” she said in reference to NAMI’s support of CHWS’s expansion. “If we’re going to be a campus that supports mental health and the health and wellness of students then we need to prioritize that.”