Opinion: h-bar – Revisiting the Holland Club
The Holland Club was so popular because it was a unique facility within the College offering a traditional ‘local’ pub ambience for staff and postgraduates to relax and socialise in. The bar was carpeted and comfortably furnished, the lighting sympathetic, the atmosphere warm and friendly. The new bar in no way “preserves the ethos of the Holland Club”, the original assurance made to staff and postgraduates by the college. Instead we have been provided with a prime example of corporate catering.
The h-bar is now identical to other college outlets and is little different to either the Students’ Union or Eastside: it has been likened by some to a motorway services; add some screaming kids and you could be in a McDonald’s. We struggle to think of a less welcoming place to enjoy a drink in the entire district. The idea that it is a ‘pub’ is contemptible.
The worst thing about the whole exercise is that it was totally preventable. The Holland Club Committee could have maintained a separate bar whilst making additional space for student meetings, meeting space being a primary reason given for making the changes.
The takeover was from the outset conducted in an underhand manner. Rumours and secretive visits to the Holland Club by senior management who were apparently ‘casing the joint’ preceded any approach to the Holland Club Committee. A sudden need to serve evening meals in the MDH was contrived so that it could then be deemed unsatisfactory for that purpose. Staff representatives and the Bar Manager, Kevin Young, spent a lot of time trying to reach a mutually agreeable solution, but the college had already decided on the outcome and the plans. There was the usual sham consultation, something the college specialises in: not one of the several hundred comments were taken on board.
The Holland Club was established in 1948 by a benevolent and far-sighted College Rector who realised that staff needed their own haven from the demands of work; a haven that became increasingly important as changes within the College developed an increasingly more pressurised working environment. Over time the social facility was extended to postgraduate students and in recent years the Holland Club has fostered new friendships and networking, facilitated informal and sometimes very productive discussions about research work, and above all provided somewhere welcoming to relax and wind down after work.
Former Holland Club users will no doubt be divided between those able to accept the change and those who cannot, and those unable to adapt will no doubt be dismissed as whining. However it must be said that many users of the old club decline to use the new facility not out of rancour but because it is just so unpleasant. Commercial services claim much positive feedback though strangely the h-bar remains unlisted on their review page: a case of Emperors’ Clothes? New staff and students will only know of the h-bar but, as with Southside, the name and reputation of the Holland Club will linger on for some time yet.
Sadly, the h-bar will above all remain a monument to the college’s contempt for its staff.
Save The Holland Club, 2013
