Not just a home away from home

I started my first year with a virtual orientation. That meant the peak of my first week was joining a Zoom call filled with Vic clubs and levies, hopping from breakout room to breakout room looking to find my place. After visiting a couple of student groups, I landed in the room for The Cat’s Eye Student Pub and Lounge. There I was able to see two of the executives chat and joke around. You could feel their friendship, their humour, and their joy through the screen as all the first-years listened in. I, alongside dozens of others, signed up to be one of the levy’s volunteers, known affectionately as the Subcommittee, or Subcomm. Since my first year was almost entirely online, we rarely were able to actually be in the lounge space, but it was still clear how passionately the executive team was working to re-open the space safely or translate it into a digital format (with a Discord server being made). I didn’t fully realise why they fought so hard to keep this levy going through the pandemic lockdowns until I became an executive myself and saw the place fully open. The Cat’s Eye isn’t just a student group; it’s a student-run third place, which is essential to our student life.

Third places refer to locations that “are neither home nor work, but locations somewhere in between.” According to the BBC, the term was coined in 1982 by sociologists Ramon Oldenburg and Dennis Brissett. These can include your favourite Kensington coffee shop (or Vic’s own Caffiends if you want to keep it fair-trade and student-run), a local library, or even the quad, which can be a site to university-brochure-like games of spike ball. These locations are precious in that they not only bring people together but hold them there in safe hands. They are meant to be neutral locations where all people can congregate without serving a capitalist idea of productivity. 

These types of spaces have also been crucial in organising and anti-oppression work. When people gather to discuss news and share ideas, change can brew in the air. For example, King Charles II became worried about uprisings after cafes began appearing, as people from various walks of life were able to meet one another and talk politics. He went even as far as to attempt a ban, which only lasted eleven days. By spending time in The Cat’s Eye, I’ve been able to watch this promise of third-places come to fruition. Some of my fondest memories in the lounge have been partaking in discussions and the sharing of knowledge. Whether it’s a group of students reading an investigative piece in The Strand about David Gilmour or watching protest signs be made as activists fought for divestment and educated unaware students of the cause. These spaces hold power as sites for the production of shared knowledge surpassing that of any singular individual. Each of us deals with a complicated web of issues, but when we come together to discuss them, we are able to find commonalities and trace back their roots to shared causes. It is through this knowledge that students can gain a better vision of how they fit into the broader population, and they can join together to resolve issues or dismantle systems which work against their collective well-being. 

While third places can be the site of community organisation and anti-oppression work, it is also imperative that the neutrality of these spaces is properly challenged. In the book, Rethinking Third Places, Simone Fullagar, Wendy O’Brien and Kathy Lloyd explore feminist perspectives on the matter. These authors “identified the need to move beyond the assumption that leisure cultures performed in third places are necessarily gender inclusive and equitable.” For example, Johnson and Samdahl (2005) identified how gay bars can act as a third place for queer identification away from heteronormative judgement; yet, they also noted the pervasiveness of misogynistic practices that excluded women.” They continued on by recognising that in a patriarchal society, where space is both socially and legally owned by men, “the third places chosen for interaction must be safe and transparent places, both physically and socially for women.”’ The study of space and third places has been expanding to consider the effects of various identities on the consideration of a space as truly ‘neutral’. Unfortunately, in their research, the authors found that “gender has largely been thought of in an isolated way from other relations of power (ethnicity, class, religion, age, ability, sexuality etc.). One of the limitations in Oldenberg’s (1999) work on third places is the privileging of a white, masculine and largely middle-class worldview that is assumed to be the ‘norm’ against which other racialized identities and meanings are defined or ignored. The example of pubs as visible third places highlights this point in relation to the normative assumptions about masculinity, heterosexuality and whiteness.” They highlight the need to use frameworks of intersectionality, as developed by Black feminist scholars, to investigate the spaces that are socially defined as third places and re-consider the idea of their neutrality. 

It is very clear that society is dangerously polarised with the help of social media algorithms and having to spend years separated physically from one another. We have also been seeing a loss in third places within our cities. However, as pointed out by Nathan Allebach in an interview with CBC, “If we look at it through a racial lens, [in] the civil rights era you have a lot of issues where Black communities had public pools that were literally filled with concrete, because there were white communities that did not want these public spaces to be filled with minorities. So you have more institutionalised forms of trying to curb these social institutions [like that], and then you have the more broad, long-term systemic effects [of] zoning.” He went on to describe how through municipal zoning practices, which prioritise only profitable expansion, third places slowly continued to decrease through the decades. 

One can even look back at our own Victoria College as there has been a documented pattern of students losing these student-run third places in exchange for administrative offices. There is a dangerous tide that has been around for many many years prioritising “productive” spaces while ignoring the urgent need for areas not meant to be productive but solely for existing. Within the societal microcosm of university, student-run spaces provide a unique comfort as our peers get to shape the space in which they inhabit, allowing it to reflect them. Just walking through The Cat’s Eye you can see the chalk walls adorned with art, messages, and memes alike. You see student decor desires resolved from bean bag chairs to a cascading ceiling of fairy lights to a variety of video games to enjoy between classes. The students know what we want to see reflected in our spaces to make them as welcoming as possible for our community. 

Throughout my time at Vic, I’ve grown incredibly attached to The Cat’s Eye as a space which signifies more than just a home away from home. It has been the site of so much personal development and enjoyment. I formed my strongest relationships within its walls not because of coursework but because we enjoy just existing with each other. The walls of the lounge have seen me gain and develop my voice and confidence to speak and live my values externally. I have only been able to develop into myself because of the safety I have been able to feel in the space and with the community it brings together. In my roles helping to run the lounge, I have been able to reflect on the constant presence of third spaces and how they have set the scene for major moments in my life. Before The Cat’s Eye, it was my high school drama room during lunch where we would play music, chat, and host impromptu lip-syncs. Before that, it was my elementary school playground where we played a variety of running-based games, where I would explore imaginary worlds with friends, and where I would scrape my knees on the pavement and stain my clothes rolling down the grassy hill. As people, we need to do more than work and sleep. Our lives can become so rich through connection, exploration, discussion, and just existing in a space. While we continue to see reductions in what can be referred to as third places, people are resilient and will find ways to come together. 

Michael Elsaesser is the Finance and Promotions Director of The Cat’s Eye