Campus Center Special

New building centers on Student Activities

The Campus Center has been designed with students in mind, and nowhere is that more evident than when analyzing the new options available to student organizations. The Campus Center maximizes many of the services available campus-wide to students, but has brought them together in one central location. From the rooms to access, the Campus Center will provide open and available services for campus groups to encourage events and social support for hard working engineering students.

The largest room, the Odium, will be the most versatile room in the center. The Odium holds 600 students for concerts or 140 students for dinners and other special affairs. Future SocComm concerts, career fairs and bands will be held within these walls. Lens and Lights and Chartwells both have side access rooms to the Odium for preparation and storage, and there is a small dressing room for future musical and theatrical artists. The room also has a piano that will be available on special occasions for professional or student performances, including Sufficiency recitals. Unfortunately, this room might not be openly available during the day for impromptu meetings.

Two other well-designed rooms are the large and small octagon shaped room. The small octagon has a wide view of Higgins House, the lawn of which will be redesigned and landscaped once the Campus Center is completed. This room seats 22 people at a circular table facing what will undoubtedly be a great view. The second larger room seats 44 people in a two-circle format with one group encompassing the other. This room has a large LCD projection display unit that can be used for presentations. Jim McLaughlin, the Director of the Campus Center, noted the precise acoustic engineering of the room "a very interesting dynamic in respect to sound ... the shape of the room produces echoes, kind of like you are talking into a microphone, but none is present." It is expected that the Student Government Association will be using this room for their meetings and will be available for larger groups seeking to meet outside the classroom.

In fact, many of the rooms in the Campus Center are available for reservation, but may not be open for students to sit in and conduct short or unreserved meetings. Many contain computer or technological equipment that must be protected by closely monitoring who uses the facilities. All meeting rooms are wired for full computer services including network access and PowerPoint presentations. In addition, many of these rooms are also going to be used by the administration for meetings, making some times unavailable for student groups to use them.

The hours of the Campus Center have not been established and student input may help direct the Campus Center planning committee in designating these hours. Jim McLaughlin will be requesting hours close to 7:00AM to 12:00AM each weekday, with the center staying open until 1:00AM on the weekends. Because of the importance of security, McLaughlin noted that planners of the center are concerned about staffing, cleaning hours, theft, vandalism and other liabilities. "At 3 or 4 in the morning, safety is a real concern."

Offices of the student activities will remain open at all times by entering through a specific stairway and gated entrance, using student IDs to open new keycard locks. These swipe cards are going to be used at each student activity door, allowing members to program in who will have access to the room.

All groups that currently have a room on-campus will have a new room in the Campus Center. Located upstairs, SocComm and SGA are once again next door to each other, and both have been given larger rooms. The Interfraterity Council and the Panhellenic Council will share a room. This denotes the first on-campus room dedicated to Greek life. To finish the quad is a room for the International Student Council. Both the Greek council room and the ISC room have been added in order to improve the relations these groups have with relation to other on-campus activities. Many students involved in Greek life and international students will now be fairly represented in the Campus Center.

Down along the corridor is WWPI's new location, perhaps a permanent one now, which features a small window. Mike Newcomb, WWPI's General Manager, commented on the design of the new studio, that "while the space is not as large as we would like to have received, there will be an office with a window looking into our studio, as well as a window between the broadcast studio and the student organization hallway on the top floor". This new room includes better equipment and more room for the group's music library. The group also made preparations for a possible future broadcast antenna. "One major item we took care of before construction of the Campus Center even began; we modified our studio design to include a large conduit running from our studios to the roof of the building. That way, any sort of antenna we need to erect in the future can be added without ripping apart the roof."

Across the hall is the general student activities area available to all clubs on campus. Lockers will be assigned to groups on campus, but not all groups are guaranteed space. In order to make the Campus Center a better resource for such groups, four computers, a photocopier, telephone and plenty of counter space and table room will hopefully encourage groups to work together and openly in this designated space. Computers are reserved specifically for work related to student activities and this area will be part of the center that is available at all hours for student use. 75 student activities of the 100 organizations will have mailboxes.

Side rooms from the general room will house the Graduate Student Organization and the Community Services area. The hope is to better integrate community service and graduate students with undergraduate activities.

Downstairs at the end of the hallway is the new student-publishing center. Although unofficially associated, Peddler, the student yearbook, and Tech News, the student newspaper of WPI, will share a common room, dark room, and storage space. Pathways, the literary magazine, will most likely share the common room with both organizations as well. Each group has an office off of the common room, with separate keycard locks that will be programmed for each staff.

One group, which is specifically fighting for dedicated space on campus, is the multicultural student organizations. This eclectic group is made primarily minority, ethnic and cultural students on campus. These groups are seeking space not only for storage, but to plan and organize more cultural activities on campus. Several suggestions have included asking for rooms available once other organization leave Daniels and Morgan and perhaps a residential house on campus. Although these plans are still in the preliminary stages, the groups are working together to create a new Cultural Center.

Although some difficulties may arise in the first month, Jim McLaughlin stresses the important link between student activities and the new Campus Center. "The hope is there is an event here every Friday night. One of our missions and purposes is to bring student involvement to the Campus center. Events and activities are what bring life and excitement to the building ... so if students don't plan events in the campus center, it will just be a pretty building."