To understand the sheer inadequacy of USC’s Topping Student Activities Center, one need look no farther than the 10,000 classroom reservations a year that Student Affairs processes on behalf of USC’s nearly 700 student organizations.

There’s nothing wrong with putting unoccupied classrooms to after-hours use for student meetings and gatherings. An online booking request system makes the process go smoothly: Student organizers pick a date and time, estimate expected attendance, and indicate their first, second and third choices of buildings.

In general, it’s a fairly good fit, says Patrick Bailey, associate dean of students and executive director of the new campus center. Most academic needs – lectures and classes, faculty committee meetings, colloquia and such – occur during the day, while most student groups need meeting space at night.

There’s just one problem, and it’s a biggie. During the first three weeks of the term, when enrollments and classroom assignments are still shaking out, the university imposes a blackout on student organizations booking classrooms. This is, unfortunately, precisely when student groups need meeting space the most – when they are recruiting new members, choosing new leaders and hammering out activities for the coming term. During these blackouts, student leaders must fend for themselves.

Sahil Chaudry knows this firsthand. During his junior year, as president of the Southern California Indo-Americans (SCIA), he remembers the tedious weekend ritual of going door to door begging for space. “We would go to VKC and they would be all full. We walked from office to office. Sometimes we just wouldn’t get a room and we’d go to someone’s apartment,” says Chaudry, now outgoing president of the Undergraduate Student Government and one of four students serving on the Campus Center Executive Committee.

That wasn’t the only headache. For SCIA’s big event, the annual South Asian culture show, the group sometimes has had to go off campus to find space big enough to hold its hundreds of members and guests. In 2006, the year Chaudry was SCIA president, the group rented the Orpheum Theatre in Hollywood. Fee for one night’s use: $23,000.

“It’s tough to raise that kind of money,” he says. SCIA spends half the year on that one hurdle.

With the new ballroom in the Tutor Campus Center, this expense will virtually disappear. While the pricing structure is still in discussion, Bailey anticipates a three-tiered incremental rental system, with student groups paying the lowest rates, university units in the middle and outside groups paying the highest. Many peer institutions offer one free event to each student group per semester, and USC may well follow that model, Bailey says.

With the demolition of the Topping Center, only one thing will be missed: its status as a memorial to USC’s seventh president. The legacy of Norman H. Topping (1908-1997) – a physician – is already preserved in the Dr. Norman Topping Tower on the Health Sciences campus. A suitable acknowledgement of his contributions to USC as a whole, and particularly to student life, is in the works.  – D.K.