What’s the one thing you can’t do on a weekday around lunch time? Find somewhere to sit on campus.
If there’s one thing that ASU needs, it’s more places for students to sit, study and relax.
The problem isn’t the seating randomly interspersed throughout campus. There are plenty of benches both inside and outside of the buildings. The real problem is the seating in high-traffic areas like Hayden Library and the Memorial Union.
Let’s start with the library.
The biggest issue there is the lack of group study space that is conducive to talking.
There is nothing more annoying than going to the library to study for an exam only to find nowhere to sit except on the upper floors, where people frown upon breathing loudly.
A significant amount of students prefer studying in groups, where they can bounce information off of each other, as opposed to studying alone in deafening silence.
Another problem in the library is the lone studier who is greedy with space.
I personally love going to the group study areas to presumably work on a group project or study with classmates and finding one person sitting a table for six. If you’re not studying with people, why are you sitting at a table for six?
I think it’s safe to assume that he or she won’t be talking to anyone, so it would be beneficial to people who actually want that space to work with others if these people would kindly take their silent studying to the silent floors.
The level of silence on the upper floors can drive you a little crazy, but there is already a serious lack of space and most students won’t ask you to move for fear of being rude.
The next, and just as pressing, problem is the MU.
Hopefully everyone has had the opportunity to see the MU in its prime: lunch time. I don’t think that calling it a zoo does it justice.
It’s nearly impossible to find somewhere to sit during the week at lunch time.
You have to circle the seating areas like a hawk, just waiting for a seat to open. If by some miracle it does, you then have to run, potentially injuring some people on the way, to be the first there.
Yes, Noble Library is often less crowded than Hayden and you could probably find somewhere to sit in some obscure corner of the MU, but sometimes students don’t have an extra 10 or 15 minutes hunting for those spots.
With more than 70,000 students, it might be time for the University to consider taking some accommodating measures to ensure that more than a lucky few get to sit inside for lunch or find a group area to study at in the library.
You can reach the columnist at lweinick@asu.edu Click here to subscribe to the daily State Press newsletter.
