The student union says the university is responsible for the closure of Campus Clinic as it starts a petition to save the health service provider.
On Monday the Campus Clinic sent an email to their twelve thousand patients announcing it will close its doors permanently at the end of the month after failing to negotiate a new lease with the University of Wollongong.
They said the university’s failure to provide new facilities and a lack of financial viability led to negotiations breaking down.
General Secretary of the Wollongong Undergraduate Students’ Association Imogen Draisma said UOW’s decision not to meet the conditions for a new lease was financially motivated.
“The University is refusing to focus on accessing services and delivering quality services,” Ms. Draisma said.
“This has been an ongoing negotiation for two years. [They] clearly made the decision that it would rather hypothetically see some other business going into that space and getting more profit than a service such as the university clinic. I think the university has a lot of time to think about this and to think about the implications.”
In a statement sent to UOW Pulse members, a UOW spokesperson said while the university is disappointed by the Campus Clinic’s decision to close, UOW will work towards providing new services in the future.
“We understand how essential health services are in the life of our campus community”, the spokesperson said.
“We are taking this opportunity to engage in broad University and community consultation to work together and reimagine medical services that address, physical and mental health needs of our students, staff, and the local community”.
Ms. Draisma said while WUSA is glad to see UOW commit to providing another health service, the closure of the Campus Clinic is unnecessary given the already established connection between students and clinic staff, especially during the COVID-19 vaccine roll out.
“I am just concerned that any model that the university does decide to implement won’t be on the scope and scale that it is currently and it won’t be providing those very specific services that our student body needs,” Draisma said.
“I know that young people want to get the vaccine as soon as possible. By taking away a clinic like this, it’s limiting the access for students who live on campus.”
WUSA posted a petition to their Facebook page on Tuesday, with the union demanding that UOW renew the lease to the operators of the Campus Clinic and supply the new facilities they asked for.
WUSA President Taani Hendricks said the petition is a fightback against an “outrageous attack.”
“The closure of [the] campus clinic is a disgraceful act of student welfare neglect and yet another appalling and obvious attack on student services in order to line the administration’s pockets at the expense of students and staff.” Ms. Hendricks said.
At the time of writing, the petition has been shared nearly 30 time on Facebook.
Reported with Eliza Lourenco