Students need more discipline-specific study spaces


As the weather starts to get colder, students across campus begin to look for places to study where they don’t have to be outside in the wind or the super-cold-for-L.A. weather. Besides the libraries, which are often crowded during peak hours, there are few spaces for students to study that are not major- or discipline-specific. That’s not to say that an engineer can’t go to the new Annenberg building to study — no one is stopping them — but an engineer may not see any of their peers in that space. 

USC needs to make more discipline-specific study spaces available on campus (and it has the room to do so). This small change would make it easier for commuter students to stay on campus between long class breaks. Additionally, creating such study spaces would foster a sense of community between students of similar majors who may not otherwise interact in or outside of class. 

While libraries are a viable alternative, the two main libraries on campus, Leavey and Doheny, suffer from overcrowding and are not conducive to collaborative studying. During midterms and other busy times of the year, any USC student would be hard-pressed to find a space in the library to sit down and work. For those who want to work with others, most of the spaces in both libraries are cordoned off for quiet studying, and the small study rooms in Leavey have to be reserved in advance. By making some classrooms in either Taper Hall, von KleinSmid Center or Grace Ford Salvatori Hall available for students, those seeking to work collaboratively could have a space to do so without needing to leave campus to go to someone’s house or apartment.

For all the students who live in Los Angeles and commute to school, three-to four-hour breaks can be tricky to navigate with few indoor spaces to study. Given L.A.’s notorious traffic, it would be infeasible for students to go home, so staying on campus is their best option. Even for students who live a mile off campus, going back and forth to their house or apartment is rather impractical. On days where it’s too hot or, rarely, too cold, students are forced to stay outside, go to a library or go to one of the newer buildings like Annenberg or Marshall. For students not from those schools, it can feel rather isolating, as they are unlikely to run into classmates or peers in either of the buildings. By creating spaces for people who study disciplines outside of communications or business, USC can help build communities for students with similar interests.

Major- or discipline-specific study rooms could also help students from small programs meet and mingle with each other. For the narrative studies majors in the English department, there is no single introductory class that all students must take. Other interdisciplinary majors, like philosophy, politics and law, have similar structures, making it hard for their students to meet and socialize. By opening up study rooms that are discipline-specific, though not exclusionary to people of other majors, USC can foster a sense of community within these majors where students often feel isolated from each other.

This problem of the lack of available, on-campus and inclusionary indoor study spaces could be easily solved by opening up some unused classrooms in von KleinSmid Center, Grace Ford Salvatori Hall or Taper Hall. Making these spaces available to students in the afternoon would put no extra strain on the University, and it would even alleviate some of the overcrowding in libraries and the few other indoor study spaces on campus. In addition to making rooms in these buildings available for more collaborative studying, there are many empty rooms in the Ronald Tutor Campus Center that can be used as classrooms or meeting rooms — perfect spaces for students to meet and study together. 

Making collaborative indoor study spaces available for students will benefit commuter students, those in smaller, interdisciplinary majors and any student who is looking for a place to finish a group project.