EDITORIAL: Convenience stores are necessity for U.
Many Rutgers students were unpleasantly surprised to find out at the start of the school year that there were no longer any convenience stores in any University campus centers. The convenience stores used to be owned and operated by Barnes & Noble, but over the summer the company turned those spaces over to the University. Now, Rutgers is working to turn the spots where the convenience stores were into new places for students to congregate and hang out. It is not quite clear yet what the true reason for the stores closing down is, but the choice is seemingly rather unpopular among students.
The Division of Student Affairs has not yet decided the fate of the now-empty room in the Student Activities Center (SAC), but it apparently plans to turn the spot in the Livingston Student Center into a multipurpose room and the spot in the Busch Student Center into an LAN Center.
On a more positive side, another multipurpose room is not all that unnecessary. Considering the more than 500 groups and clubs at Rutgers, multipurpose rooms are in high demand. Campus organizations are always seemingly scrambling to book one so that they can hold events and meetings. This extra multipurpose room, then, will likely go to good use and benefit at least some. It is much more difficult to say the same about the center planned for the Busch Student Center.
While no doubt an interesting idea, an LAN Center does not seem helpful to the students of Busch campus at all. Without the convenience store, there is nowhere else for Busch residents to get the regular everyday supplies they need on their campus. Now, they have to travel to another campus for such items — and the same goes for residents of Livingston campus. Additionally, the students who live in the river dorms now have to walk all the way to The Yard @ College Avenue if they need supplies in a pinch.
In addition to the inconvenience on-campus residents will experience, commuters may get it even worse — especially those without meal plans. Eating at a Rutgers dining hall without a meal plan is extremely expensive, and last year the convenience stores at the campus centers may have acted as an easy spot to grab something quick to eat, or maybe a pack of gum, between classes. Without them, commuters without meal plans do not have many easy places to choose from, especially on Busch and Livingston.
Losing the campus convenience stores is not the end of the world, but it sure makes the lives of a good deal of students at least a bit more complicated. Most students would seemingly prefer Rutgers to, if possible, replace the now empty rooms with simply more convenience stores. As the saying goes — you never know what you have got until it is gone.
The Daily Targum's editorials represent the views of the majority of the 150th editorial board. Columns, cartoons and letters do not necessarily reflect the views of the Targum Publishing Company or its staff.
