_Emmett Ferguson is a freshman journalism major at MU. He is an opinion columnist who writes about student life for The Maneater._
Ellis Library is not open 24 hours anymore. No longer can students go in at any time they choose, day or night, to study. This is outrageous in the eyes of many students; however, this most recent cutback from the library is in no way ridiculous.
It’s unfortunate that the library won’t be open 24 hours. The classic image of a college library is a student inside at 2 a.m., nose buried in a textbook and hands death-gripping a Starbucks coffee like it was the last string tied to mental stability keeping them sane. While the coffee part is probably still true, that student would’ve had to leave hours ago under the new, restricted hours.
The library itself is not to blame for this. The library has tried to avoid taking this measure for a while now and has even taken bullets in place of students to try and keep the library open. The library’s budget, when adjusted for inflation, is down about 40 percent in the past 15 years. This resulted in cutting from its own staff before closing the library earlier and inconveniencing students. As university enrollment grew, the library staff shrunk, dropping by about a quarter of full-time employees since 2001. People lost their jobs before Ellis decided not to be open 24/7.
A university library is much more than just an old brick building filled with books and computers. The library is a whole system that the university, both students and staff, is reliant on. Over 40 percent of the library’s budget is used on subscribing to databases and journals. These offer recent and reliable research for professors and students to use. These databases are essential for professors who conduct outside research — which is many of them, because the university often judges the value of a professor on their research. This makes it very difficult for new staff to prove they are worth keeping, and it can result in them being dropped. Imagine being a professor in the science department and wanting to conduct a study, but you don’t have access to the research you need to conduct it. The acquisitions budget is so ridiculously low that certain professors cannot even access articles that they themselves have published because the library can’t afford a subscription to the database those articles are on.
The library attempted to resolve the problem by proposing a student fee that would’ve started out as $5 per credit hour per student. Quick math: That’s about 75 bucks if you’re taking a 15-credit-hour semester. This would’ve allowed the library not only to stay open 24 hours, but re-subscribe to databases essential to professors, renovate sections of the library that students have been complaining about, potentially rehire staff and even subscribe to modern magazines that students could read for their own pleasure.
While a majority of students last year actually thought the library was underfunded, a majority also didn’t vote for the student fee that would’ve fixed that. There was even a campaign started encouraging students to fail the library fee, claiming that it was the university’s job to pay for the library. The reality of the situation is that the university gets the majority of its money from the students. The state of Missouri provides less than half of the funding for the University of Missouri; most of it comes from students already. To put this in autumnal themed layman’s terms, say your college tuition was a venti pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks, this student fee would add not even two cents onto your purchase.
Yes, it is inconvenient that the library is no longer open 24 hours, especially to those students paying for college themselves, working one or more jobs and only finding themselves with time to study at odd hours. However, it is not at all unreasonable or unwarranted. People lost their jobs before students were stopped from waltzing in at 3 a.m. to cram for an exam they’d put off studying for. Most of all, it is not at all the library’s fault. The library has been dealing with a mediocre budget for more than 30 years, yet the only time students have ever said anything about it is when it has even the slightest effect on them. So no, it is in no way outrageous for the library to close its doors for the night.
