If you’ve been in or around The Quad in the last two and a half months you’ve noticed the major inconvenience and eyesore that is the construction of Troy H. Middleton Library. It began roughly around Oct. 13, when a school wide email was sent out alerting the student body and faculty that everyone would now need to “make a small detour to enter the building.” However, little did students know the project would soon expand and disrupt more than a single entrance.
Currently, you have to walk all the way to the side closest to the Himes Hall to enter the library. There’s also no access to the covered pathway to the left of the entrance. It’s a real bummer on days with heavy rain because students are no longer sheltered from the elements.
In addition to the inconvenience of the entrance location, the email also stated there will be more noise Monday to Friday from 7:30 a.m to 3:30 p.m. The message specifies that the noise will end at 3:30 p.m., saying that like it’s any consolation that when all the students finally finish our classes in buildings near said noise, then the noise will finally be over when we’re all on our way home. It’s not a comforting statement, it’s just plain dumb.
Aside from the extra noise and longer distances students have to endure, the construction has made the already disgusting and dreaded Middleton Library an even worse place to study, when students need it the most. The official email from administration was sent out during midterms week when campus and every nearby coffee shop was already packed with students, now finals are approaching and we still have to deal with construction. It makes absolutely no sense why this project couldn’t wait until the quieter summer months, or have been more speedily done during the long winter break.
As finals approach, students are concerned about graduating, passing classes and acing final exams. It’s hard enough to find conducive, quiet study environments where we thrive. With the library becoming even more hectic with the noise, the single entrance door and pathway crowded by a mob of people, the library has been ticked off of many people’s list of productive study areas.
It’s fine if the University wants to make the already crowded quad crazier and further congest the area. It’s not O.K. to make Middleton Library somewhere students can hardly access and can barely concentrate in during midterms and finals. With no official end date, just an estimated date of Jan. 10, 2018, it is utterly unacceptable to most of us hard-working, just-trying-to-get-by students here at the University to make such a terribly planned mistake.
Jordan Miller is a 21-year-old elementary education junior from New Orleans, Louisiana.
