On most college campuses the student center is the place to be and the place to be seen. Student centers are open late. They often boast a multitude of restaurants for students to choose from. They have multiple lounges and places to do work or hold meetings.
Usually they also have entertainment, places like bowling alleys. In short they are the center of student of life. Students go there because they want to and it is a legitimate place for the night’s entertainment.
But not at DU. In fact the Driscoll Center, which isn’t even technically a student center, is pretty much the opposite of what it should be. There aren’t many dining options and those aren’t open late enough.
The Commons, which is great for grabbing some real food real quick closes at 2 p.m. This is ridiculous. What if you want to get a sandwich made for you (not the pre-packaged kind) or a pizza or the salad bar at 2:30 or 3:30 p.m. you are just out of luck.
Not to mention the Pub, which can take close to half an hour for your food to come. Not to mention that the Pub closes at 8 p.m. (7 p.m. on Fridays!), which seems illogical on a college campus where people are constantly on the go until 9 or 10 p.m., sometimes without a break for dinner.
These students are just stuck for the night and forced to fend for themselves off campus. While the lack of dining options and inconvenient hours of operation are annoying, they are not insulting.
What is insulting is having the Driscoll Center, the link between the north and south sides of campus, locked down for t long holiday weekends. This past weekend, Memorial Day weekend, the center was locked and silent.
Students were not allowed in. There was no place to hang out that is not the dorms or the library. This is unacceptable. It is completely unfathomable that a university does not allow its students to use all student areas at all hours and every day.
Even worse, it inhibited student-run activities. KVDU had three shows scheduled for Saturday alone but the DJs could not get into the building to broadcast.
The Clarion could not get into itsr office to work on thelast issue. We had to have our advisor call Campus Safety to let us in, and we had to have our advisor with us at all times. How is that empowering students?
The answer is it is not. The point of student groups is to encourage students to act and grow and lead. But how can we when we do not have the complete freedom to do our work?
This is a university and it should be for students. It would be really nice if the if the school acknowledged it.
