It would not be an overstatement to suggest that most students use their Sundays to be productive. They fit in the workout they skipped on Friday or Saturday, tackle the enormous pile of laundry in their room and, most importantly, sit down to do the homework that has been neglected all weekend. In most cases, Sunday is a day free of classes, club meetings, social events and internships; thus, it is the most logical and popular day to do homework. Why, then, does the library not open until noon on Sundays?
The library is a necessary resource for students to escape noisy roommates and to be able to focus on their work sans distractions. Most importantly, the library serves as the only on-campus resource for students to check out books and browse the archives. Many students are unable to focus without being at the library, so they are reliant upon its being open in order to study. Sunday, of any day, would be considered “library day” for most students. In fact, many students are forced to do most, if not all, of their assignments for the entirety of the coming week on Sunday because of work schedules and extracurricular activities. Sunday provides the largest chunk of time that busy students are able to set aside to do schoolwork, so having to wait until noon to dive into work is ridiculous.
It is also an issue that many resources that students need are not available until after noon. For students involved in communication classes, many programs necessary for projects such as Final Cut Pro are only available on library computers during the weekend. Students are unable to tackle their editing tasks until later in the day, hindering their schedules.
Also, professors in a variety of areas from history to theology to economics assign movies as homework for the class. Many students rent these movies or watch them in the library. Many do not have an opportunity to tackle these projects until the weekend. The limited hours force students to work on a tighter deadline than planned.
It is understandable to open the library a little later on weekends. It would be unreasonable to suggest that a significant number of Fordham students are waking up at 6 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays to do work. However, it is not ridiculous to consider that students are rolling out of bed around 8:30 or 9 a.m. In fact, the 9 a.m. opening time on Saturdays seems like the perfect time for the entire library to open on a weekend morning. The small space at the front of the library that students are allowed into at 10 a.m. is not large enough to fit all of the students who wish to be there, and it forces students to interrupt their work after an hour or two to move to a quiet spot in the actual library.
With Fordham as an increasingly competitive university set to climb the rankings, its growing enrollment of higher caliber students demands a library that suits their needs. A library that closes during the week at midnight is unacceptable. Students are robbed of its many resources at an early hour and are instead herded into a small, crowded room that is only open until 2 a.m. without access to any actual library facilities. Students frequently pull all-nighters or study into the early hours of the morning, but have nowhere to go other than their dark rooms filled with sleeping roommates or tiny study lounges lacking proper resources. Many universities have 24 hour libraries. We recognize that Fordham’s student body is not large enough to support a 24 hour library, but it does warrant a library that is at least open for a few morning hours on the busiest homework day of the week and past the midnight closing time during the week.
The library offers many great resources that students do and should utilize.
However, with many students involved on and off campus, the limited hours severely infringe upon the usefulness of these resources. The library needs to allow students to fully maximize their weekend time and extend library hours.
