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BY APOLLINE BERTY

In print | October 11, 2007

Last week, Student Council sent out a campus-wide e-mail with a link to a survey concerning the possibility of longer hours at McCabe. A total of 627 people participated in the survey and 72.7 percent indicated that they would use McCabe Sunday through Thursday if it were open later. 42.7 percent were in favor of McCabe staying open to 2 a.m., making it the most preferred closing time.

Student Council had been receiving requests for longer hours at McCabe and decided in conjunction with the administration to conduct a campus survey in order to determine a rough estimate of the level of students’ interest in extending library hours.

The Deans just wanted to be sure that this wasn’t just something that a few students would be interested in, Student Council President Peter Gardner ’08 said.

However, Student Council members are still unsure as to if and when new hours could be put in place.We would love it if something could get in motion this semester, Student Council Campus Life Advisor Alyssa Work ’08 said.

Now that Student Council has the results of the survey, which indicate a strong student interest in extending McCabe’s hours, it will start working with the administration to figure out the specific logistics and begin the process towards accomplishing this change.

We have to schedule meetings with Peggy Seiden, who [is] the head librarian, Kai Campbell, Myrt Westphal and Jim Larimore, and take the next steps, said Student Council Secretary Meredith Firetog ’10.

Some of the things Student Council must discuss with the administration are the additional costs, changing student worker shifts and further energy use. All the things that have to change, we have to talk about how much money it would cost, people who would need to be working in the library, in terms of student workers and changing those shifts, how much energy is going to be used, Firetog said.

Matt Thomas ‘10, a computer consultant at McCabe, is unconcerned by the possibility of working more hours. From a public area consultant’s point of view, more hours to work [means] more pay which is nice, Thomas said. That would give the students who need a computer more time to stay up and study, [and] a little more room to procrastinate.

If hours are extended at McCabe, Student Council will also be looking into extending the time shuttles will be running between Parrish circle and off-campus dorms.

It does involve money. It involves changing shuttles. It’s not something that has no further effects and we don’t want to make that decision out of nowhere, Work said.

Overall the Student Council was very pleased with the strong participation

in the survey across the whole student body. [The participation was] almost exactly even among the classes, which is really cool. It’s like 24, 25 point something [percent] in terms of each class, Firetog said.

Though administration had argued in favor of a 1 a.m. closing time at McCabe in order to minimize issues concerning lack of sleep amongst students, Firetog explained that they were ready to change the hours if there was a strong desire from the campus to do so.

The administration was pretty open to it. Basically, [they were] like, Do the survey and find out how many students do want it,’ which is a legitimate request, and we probably would’ve wanted to do that either way, Firetog said.

Gardner also explained that it is still uncertain as to which days might have extended hours and that the administration might be in favor of implementing later hours for one day first before they decide to permanently enforce the change.

We don’t yet know what days will be affected by the time change. It may be that the administration wants to run a pilot program for one day and gauge student support for that before they decide to keep the library open later for the whole week, Gardner said. In other words, we don’t yet know which days will be changed and it might be on an incremental basis, judging student support along the way.

Now that there is evidence of widespread campus support for extended hours at McCabe, Student Council and the administration will begin working together to figure out the specific logistics in order to respond to the student body’s request.

I don’t anticipate any big problems coming. I think its just sort of, How do we most reasonably and efficiently implement this?’ Gardner said.

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