When I was going on college tours all through high school, I remember many of them starting at the student center of whatever fine institution I was visiting that day. The standard student center was modern and expansive, featuring multitudes of tables, couches, and desks where students sat happily typing away or chatting with friends. How exciting it would be, I thought, to be surrounded by so many of my future peers as I finished homework or met up for coffee! Little did I know, that dream would never come to fruition.
Don’t get me wrong, the Brown University Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center is most definitely a beautiful building with a lot to offer. Nothing is better than a Blue Room latte on a Monday morning, a brisk walk through the Faunce Arch because you’re late to class, or a bag of Trolli sour gummy worms bought with Flex Points from Gourmet to Go. However, we have to admit that old Steph simply does not have enough casual meeting space for a school of more than 7,000 undergrads.
The student center basement boasts the lovely Underground coffee shop, which can hold about 8.5 people if you’re lucky, and a few other scattered tables and faux leather chairs. On the second floor is the Leung Family Gallery, which houses a pretty decent array of tables and sofas. However, it’s difficult to sit with a few friends to chat without getting glares from the other 20 students silently at work there. That leaves the seating outside the Blue Room cafe for the several hundreds, if not thousands, of people planning to casually “meet up at the campus center” each day. Eight booths, roughly twenty (a generous estimate) tables, and a few padded sofas and chairs are simply not enough.
In order to truly contextualize the deficit of space, I’d like to list a few places that could most definitely accomodate more individuals than our dear campus center.
- My Grad B suite common room — on a Friday night we can fit probably hundreds of people in that mosh pit
- Baja’s Tex Mex — every student on campus somehow fits into that sliver of a room post-crew house
- Crew house — enough said
- One of those all-glass panopticon study rooms on the first floor of the Rock — I’ve seen the entire girls lacrosse team squeeze into one of those
- A singular wooden table at the Ratty — somehow they fit 20 football bros??
- My car if I tell my friends I’m going to Trader Joe’s — the girlies never miss a trip to Trader Joe’s. ALL of the girlies.
- The bathroom at Ceremony — truly one of the most grand and luxurious restrooms I’ve ever encountered. definitely big enough for a business meeting
We must demand change. The Blue Room has turned into a ruthless and cutthroat environment where students would rather lose their life’s savings than their booth with a charging port. We have to stop kidding ourselves when we say “oh, let me schedule my meeting at the campus center, I’m sure we’ll find a spot.” You won’t find a spot. And if you do, you know you won’t be able to hear a word your interviewee says over the cacophony of conversation and altercations over who laid claim to the newly freed up table first. If you have ideas for casual and convenient meet-up spots on campus, please share your wealth of knowledge with others. The fate of our student body depends on it.
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