As midterms rolled around this semester, Tufts students began, as usual, to flock to the library. And, as usual, many began to question why they were only allowed in the main area until 1 a.m.
But while Tisch Library Director Jo-Ann Michalak is not necessarily opposed to lengthening the hours, it appears that concerns about costs and viability will block any major changes for the foreseeable future.
Tufts' limited hours make it an outlier among its peer institutions. Of the U.S. News and World Report's top 30 colleges, Tufts is one of the only ones not to have at least a 24-hour study room.
Dartmouth College, which has 4,085 undergrads compared to Tufts' 4,995, extended its library's hours to 2 a.m. in September and opened up two 24-hour study rooms.
Tufts only has one late-night room and it closes at 3 a.m. Sunday through Thursday. The Tower Café is also open until 3 a.m. those days.
Both facilities, as well as the main library, have shortened hours on Fridays and Saturdays.
Debra Agnoli, the circulation and reserve services supervisor at Dartmouth's library, said that the new hours are "definitely wanted and the space definitely gets used."
Wake Forest University, ranked right below Tufts in this year's U.S. News and World Report rankings, also has a 24-hour study room. Meanwhile, Lehigh University, similar to Tufts in ranking and undergraduate population, has its entire library open until to 2 a.m.
Tufts has not followed suit partly for budgetary reasons.
Some schools have met student demand by lengthening the hours of their study rooms, but even if Tufts were to do the same, students might not have access to all of the library's resources late at night.
Currently, students must leave the library in order to enter the study room. They are also prohibited from bringing reserve materials into the room after the main library closes.
According to Michalak, this is because the reading room door does not have a sensor that checks to see if students are leaving with library materials. She said that it would cost around $15,000 to install this technology.
Keeping any part of the library open would bring about other charges too, as the university would need to pay people to supervise students.
A potentially larger concern for Michalak, though, is how much student interest there is in extended hours.
A library survey last year, for example, showed that students' main concern was the quality of study areas, not the facility's hours.
"I'm not taking sides," Michalak said. "I'm just saying that in order for the library to extend its hours we're going to need additional funding, student support [and] administrative support."
There are also operational obstacles. The old Wessell Library had a 24-hour study room, but Michalak said it was not a "quality study space" because it was always dirty. As such, she said that she would have to figure out how to clean a space that never closes.
Agnoli said that Dartmouth has gotten around this problem because the around-the-clock areas are virtually empty at 9 or 10 a.m.
In the meantime, Tufts officials appear to be more comfortable with gradual changes. The library used to close at midnight before its hours were extended to 1 a.m. And at the start of this year, the Tower Café began staying open until 3 a.m. rather than 1 a.m.
The latter change was the result of a Tufts Community Union (TCU) initiative and required the university to pay for a guard to be stationed near the café during the later hours.
But sophomore C.J. Mourning, the chair of the Senate's Services Committee, said that student response has been unenthusiastic.
"The numbers haven't been so hot," she said.
And if students are not showing interest in this option, she questions whether there would be enough of a desire to extend the hours of the main library.
"We know students want it, but it's hard to give it to them when they're not utilizing what we give them," she said.
Still, sophomore Julia Carn said this might be because the Tower Café is not the best place to study. "I'd rather have the reading room open later than the café open too," she said.
Even if the current Tower experiment is not getting much interest, sophomore Chris Giliberti feels that later library hours would gain traction. "I think if you open it for 24 hours, people will catch on and use it," he said.
Michalak also recognized that possibility. "Maybe we're not acknowledging how booked students are," she said.
