By Alex Nash
Watzek Library has recently announced a plan that would see the library closed from midnight to 8 a.m. Sunday through Thursday beginning in the fall semester of 2025, while maintaining the limited weekend hours and extending the hours during reading days and finals.
Watzek created a form for students to express whether they approved of the plan. In the form’s opening statement, Watzek explained that they were considering this change in hours because of “library staffing needs, light usage of the library during this time, and the availability of alternative study spaces in Fowler Student Center.”
Despite the plan, Watzek wanted to hear opinions of the potential schedule change from students before deciding on it. The form accepted responses until Nov. 22.
As a student with an incredibly busy schedule, I feel it would be a blunder for Watzek to change the library hours as proposed, since so many students rely on getting schoolwork done overnight in the library. This is particularly true for students whose schedules are packed with classes and extracurricular activities during daylight hours and the evenings, leaving them little time to complete homework other than during the late night hours. Even if they do not regularly complete homework overnight in the library, students may spend time overnight in the library studying for tests, particularly for midterms, which Watzek did not propose extending library hours for next fall.
Recently, I had to participate in a moot court for my Constitutional Law class acting as a Supreme Court justice. In this role, I had to write a 20-page judicial opinion on a fictional case that was covered in just two weeks while simultaneously reading seven hundred pages of historical cases to apply by precedent. On top of the moot court, I also had a tight schedule loaded with classes during the day along with choir rehearsals, Ghanaian drumming, singing and piano practice during the evenings. Oh, and of course I cannot forget juggling Mossy Log articles and homework from other classes!
I spent a week completing the judicial opinion, with 4 consecutive nights spent overnight in the library. I was finally able to complete my opinion at 4 a.m. the morning it was due.
This was not the first time I pulled an all-nighter in the library. I find it hard to focus in my dorm room, so I have sometimes worked in my dorm hall’s common room. Yet, even during the witching hours, common rooms were not free from distractions, since some of my neighbors would walk around to the common kitchen or the bathrooms or talk with friends despite quiet hours. Therefore, I have found the library to be the best spot on campus to study and work overnight due to its mostly distraction-free environment.
Despite Watzek’s claim about the availability of study spaces in Fowler, I hardly ever see anybody in these rooms whenever I walk back to my dorm from the library during the early hours. Perhaps it is either because numerous students do not know that Fowler’s rooms are open overnight, or they prefer the library due to its resources and environment. Even if Fowler’s study spaces replaced the library for overnight access, they are inferior to the library since they lack accessible printers or computers and are designed for group studying or meetings, even though students almost always work individually overnight in the library.
Furthermore, most students do not have their own printers and have to rely on the library’s, which they sometimes do overnight to turn in a printed copy of their paper the next morning. Sometimes, a student’s personal laptop or desktop computer may break, forcing them to rely on the library’s computers for homework. The plan would particularly present a barrier for low-income students who may rely on the library’s computers and printers due to the high costs of technology. If the library closed at midnight on the weekdays, it would hinder students who need to use the library’s printers and computers to complete work overnight, as it is the only place on campus that provides students with these resources.
Due to our reliance on the library’s printers and computers, the library’s planned opening time at 8 a.m presents another accessibility issue since numerous students have classes that start at 8 a.m. Some of these classes expect students to turn in a printed paper at the start of class and may continue to do so if the library starts opening at 8 a.m. It is not uncommon for students to scramble to the library right before the start of their classes to print a paper, but if the library opened at 8 a.m., students with these early morning classes would have to finish and print the paper the night before.
As college students, we have an abundance of classes that place high expectations on getting heavy loads of work completed in a short time-frame. Some students may have lucked out in not needing to work overnight due to taking less rigorous classes or having a more open schedule, but for others, that is not the case. I am grateful to have a library on campus that allows me overnight access to complete class assignments and study in a distraction-free and solo-study friendly environment. Overall, it would be a mistake for the library to take away this amenity from us.
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