Student Council's Student Life Committee announced Tuesday that it has successfully negotiated a plan with University Library officials to keep the Brown Science and Engineering Library in Clark Hall open until 4 a.m. during the upcoming final exam period.
Currently, the library closes at 2 a.m. The library's extended hours will begin Wednesday and will continue through Dec. 17, said Charlotte Morford, University Library director for communications.\n"It was one of the [Committee's] requests to enrich student life," she added.
Library staff, however, will not be available during those two extra hours, Committee Co-Chair Aagya Mathur said.
"People can't check out books, but it'll be open as a work space," she said. "All staff areas will be closed, and there will be guards to keep it safe. You have to swipe in at that time so people in the general public can't have access."
Morford added that the library will close at 10 p.m. Dec. 12 because it precedes a reading day.
Mathur said she hopes the extended hours will reduce crowding at Clemons Library as well as provide an alternative location to study for first-year students.
"We wanted to extend the library hours ... also so we could have a better location for first years since it's a little closer to first-year dorms than other libraries," Mathur said. "It's safer overall."
To help cover the costs associated with extending the library's hours, the Engineering Student Council will provide $300. The Arts and Sciences Council also agreed at a Wednesday night meeting to sponsor the change.
Committee Co-Chair Kristin Flow said both her committee and the library will work to strategically advertise the extended hours. The idea to extend the hours came from a student suggestion on Council's Speak Up UVA Web site, which seeks to improve communication with University students by providing them with a means of suggesting initiatives they would like to see Council attempt.
"It's been effective in gauging student interest for new initiatives - not initiatives that Student Council creates internally necessarily, but things students think of on their own and want to see Student Council work on," said William Reynolds, Council chief technological officer and Speak Up UVA founder. "We're getting many more ideas than Council has been able to generate internally."
About 120 ideas have been posted since the Web site was officially launched in September, Reynolds said.
"In terms of numbers of users we've had over 600 students interacting with the site by posting ideas, commenting or voting," he said.
Both the extended library hours and Speak Up UVA stemmed from Council's efforts to achieve tangible goals and reach out to students in new ways, Council President John Nelson said.
"We've been successful, but we have a lot more to do in reaching out to the student body and starting a dialogue on valid issues at the University and ways to improve the student experience here," Nelson said.
He also noted that Council will continue working during Winter Break in preparation for the spring semester.
"Winter Break is a good time to step back and think of some of the things we've done and plan ahead for spring," Nelson said. "Our goal is to hit the ground running when we get back ... We'll continue to e-mail administrators, contact faculty and plan internally within Council over break"
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