The scenario runs something like this: actors from the performance group Short Curtains will start to build a Lego structure. Which will catch the attention of students working on the Stanford Foster Care College Project. Who will wave across the lounge to their friends from the Stanford Exchange Store.
E.A.S.E.—Enhancing Awareness for Successful Education—members will look up from the curriculum project they’re reviewing for inner-city kids in Oakland, and students from the ASSU Book Service will also be drawn to the Lego table.
Before anyone can say “collaboration,” it will be happening. As students from all five groups gather ’round the IKEA table in the bright red room, they’ll ever so naturally turn to topics of mutual interest: weblogs, marketing ideas and technological fixes for organizational problems.
That’s the purpose of the Blender, a suite of 10 brightly painted rooms—purple, red, green, yellow, blue—on the first and second floors of the Old Union’s Nitery building. “It’s like a student-activities version of the Clark Center,” says project manager Mojan Movassate, ’06, referring to the interdisciplinary biosciences building. The Blender, which also includes meeting rooms that any group may use, is a joint effort of the ASSU, Innovative Student Information Services and the Office of Student Activities.
Five groups have been allotted office space for the spring-quarter debut of the Blender; come fall, another round of applicants will compete for—or should we say collaborate on?—using the rooms.
