Starting in the fall, the Hub will no longer be the official on-campus late-night study center, with those duties being taken over by the Reitz Union, which will remain open until 3 a.m. — along with Taco Bell, Starbucks and possibly Subway.
We think it makes a lot of sense to shift the late-night hours away from the Hub, but instead of the Reitz Union, how about extending hours for, say, a library? Even one of the smaller ones would work fine.
As it stands, this is a useless transition. SG voted to take away one late-night “study center” without any kind of study materials on site and replace it with another equally under-equipped venue to host a cram session.
Rather than providing a venue for actual studying, this just reeks of an SG-backed way for people living or parking on campus to get drunk food during their march home from Midtown at 2 a.m.
We enjoy getting our fourth meal on as much as anyone, but we’d be hard pressed to say the ability to buy a Baja Blast at 2 a.m. is as important as being able to check out a book we never bought right before a test.
According to SG, the move is supposed to provide safer parking and save the university $35,000 in the midst of a budget crunchg, which is commendable, but we already have a use for some of that money that would allow us to have our burrito and eat it too: take half of it and pay a couple student employees to keep one of the smaller libraries, equipped with computers and – dare we say it, books – open into the wee hours of the morning.
It’s a radical idea, and apparently a novel concept to the SG crowd, but at least there would be a viable option for people who actually want to study at 2 a.m.
