For Cassandra Hendricks, the St. Catherine University library offers a quiet campus refuge and a place to team up with fellow students. But the graduate student worries that next fall that space will be much more cramped.
Students and faculty are pushing back against a university plan to carve out library space for its Public Safety Department, saying the move will further cut into library real estate after a student services office moved in earlier this year. University officials say the move is necessary to restore the lounge area on the second floor of the Coeur de Catherine (CDC) building where the Public Safety Department moved three years ago after its original location, a small building behind Derham Hall, got contaminated with mold.
The library is on the first floor of the CDC.
But opponents of the move insist the university should have sought more input from the campus community.
"This campus has a social justice mission statement and should commit more fully to enacting a deeper level of transparency regarding decisions that affect a central, integral space everyone on campus uses," said Hendricks, who is studying for a master's degree in library information science and is vice president of the student group Progressive Librarians Guild.
University President ReBecca Koenig Roloff, in an e-mail responding to student concerns, explained that the current location of Public Safety was always intended to be temporary, and it needed to move to reopen the student lounge. "Making that space accessible again to all, but especially students, has been the key request of students since I arrived," Roloff said.
"How we use our precious space for highest and best use will change with time," she wrote.
But Hendricks said she is disappointed with what she sees as a lack of outreach from the university throughout the process. She also raised concerns about the Public Safety Department after a security guard shot himself in 2017 and blamed it on a black suspect who didn't exist.