As the final weeks of the term are now upon us, more students are beginning to bear down and work on final papers, projects and prepare for tests.
In order to do the best possible job on these final academic tasks, most students need a suitable workspace to study in. As is the case during the last few weeks of every term, study spots are becoming much more crowded and noisy with the added traffic.
However, it is noticeable that many places on campus that would seem to be good spaces to get work done remain restricted to student access.
A prime example of this is the crown jewel of University buildings, the Lillis Business Complex. Though the building is beautiful and designed extremely well for both students and faculty, an opportunity is being missed by locking the doors to otherwise empty study spaces.
On the fourth floor, the “community room” is not nearly as available to everyone as the name would have you believe. A nice, quiet room tucked in the private location of the top corner of the building, the community room never has more than a few reserved time slots per day. Other than those times, the room remains empty and locked, accessible typically only by punching in a number sequence into a keypad.
It is completely understandable that some would like to be able to reserve spaces like this for large faculty meetings. However, what is the harm in opening the room to students when it is not being used by any other groups? It is just wasted study space that could be used by up to 25-30 students.
Lillis does the right thing by making a quiet room available by the staircase on the second floor whenever the conference room is empty or interviews are not being conducted in the offices adjacent to that space. So why not do the same for the community room on the fourth floor?
At the least, rooms like this should be made available during the last few weeks of the term when the number of students that would use the spaces are much higher.
Yes, the Knight library does stay open late come the end of the term, but there are a lot of students who simply do not study well in that giant, poorly lit cave of a building without enough functioning electrical outlets. That is why you see students studying in the law library, EMU and at the limited available tables in Lillis from open until close during this time of the term.
Even opening a few of the conference rooms in Lillis would be a drastic improvement that could be used when meetings are not scheduled. If there is not a group meeting in the room until 3 p.m., leave it open for students until 2:30 and then make the students leave.
That is not to say that the University should unlock every door to every building in the school and let students have free reign to study parties with the sound systems that professors have yet to figure out how to use. But unlock a few more spots during the finals season so students have more variety available.
There is no point to leaving spaces like the community room locked and empty when they are not being used for any other purpose during the day. Students would appreciate the additional space, and the University could actually get its money’s worth out of the entire building in which they invested so much.