It started out innocently enough. Overnight hours for libraries had been a hot topic for several years in Student Government-land before becoming a reality during the 2012-13 fiscal year. Keep this in mind: SG was the entity that started funding overnight library hours (this will become more important later on).
As I mentioned last week, then came Newell Hall — whose pretty high operating costs forced us to cut most of the money we used to boost Library West’s hours. SG simply felt that they did not have the money to keep Newell open in addition to keeping West’s overnight hours. So, SG then “chose the cheaper move and adjusted Library West’s hours” as noted by a past The Alligator article.
Then came the controversy, then came the Provost stepping in to help fund the pilot program which measured Library West’s and Newell Hall’s usage in Fall 2017. During that time, the Provost helped fund Library West’s extended hours.
Then, in December 2017, there was a curious platform tracker video published on the SG page. In it, former Student Body President Smith Meyers and former Senate President Ian Green appear, announcing that Library West will again be 24/7 for the upcoming spring. “You spoke, and we listened. Using the data from this survey, as well as the 24/5 pilot program this past fall, we have worked with the Provost to secure funding for Library West to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” says Green. The rest of the video is mostly the two of them fawning over themselves for being able to have two 24/7 study spaces on campus. Watch for yourself; this video really didn’t age well at all.
Looks like a happy ever after ending, right? Wrong. What the video failed to provide any indication of was this funding that SG had secured with the Provost was just for an additional study to be conducted in the Spring. To quote the final study, “The results from this initial (fall) study were primarily opinions provided through survey responses, so Provost Glover agreed to fund overnight hours at Library West again in spring 2018 to collect data on occupancy and utilization.”
Then, the study ended. SG was asked for their decision. An email sent to the Provost from the Dean of Libraries goes like so: “After carefully reviewing the results of the analysis, Student Government has concluded that it will not fund overnight hours for Library West. Instead, they will make improvements in Newell Hall to address the deficiencies that were identified by the study.” Sure sounds like it was an SG decision to me.
The framing of the aftermath from President Green was a bit different, however, as recorded in another past The Alligator article: “The Provost’s Office made their decision based on the data collected, Student Body President Ian Green said.”
At Senate this past Tuesday night, we heard a lot more of this shifting of blame to the Provost. There, Green talked about how Library West was an academic building that our tuition already funds; thus, students shouldn’t have to double-pay for the libraries by having SG supplement the tuition-funded libraries with student fee-funded SG money. Sounds pretty agreeable, I suppose.
The stance of our SG administration, it appears, is that our university should fund West’s 24/7 hours even though SG has traditionally been the entity that has funded the supplemental overnight hours. Could SG have continued to fund Newell while funding Library West? I believe so, it’s just that — the way I see it — we’re not funding Library West’s overnight hours in our attempt to get our university administration to provide the funding. It’s SG versus the university administration and, unfortunately, the students are the civilian casualties while neither entity funds the Library West’s overnight hours.
OK, so I guess I didn’t really get to occupancy or finances like I said I would… Maybe next week?
Questions, comments or concerns? Email me at zchou@ufl.edu.
Zachariah Chou is a UF political science junior and Murphree Area Senator. His column focuses on Student Government.
