The main activity of Columbia students, for better or worse, is studying. It seems like the architects didn’t get the memo.

The other day, sitting in Lerner after a wonderful Ferris breakfast of what I think (hope) was scrambled eggs, I sat down to get some studying done. Lo and behold, my computer wouldn’t turn on! I swear I had charged it last night … but no matter, I had a charger and was sitting right by an outlet. I plugged in my computer, only to see the same screen telling me to charge my device. Fine. I switched the outlet in which my device was plugged and still, nothing. 

I didn’t feel like trudging back to my dorm and sitting in the dimly lit room to study – I wanted to be surrounded and motivated by my educated peers. Normally, I would bring myself over to Butler or one of our many other libraries on campus to charge my computer while I worked. However, Columbia and Barnard’s campuses have a problem: there are NO outlets. 

Libraries are supposed to be a place of growing one’s knowledge. But if the only way I can do that is by waiting day and night to hopefully grab one of the five tables with a charging port, I am never learning anything. And it’s not just the libraries. There have been multiple times I have been in class with no outlets to be found, and fighting for my life typing notes with a dying computer. Even just generally in buildings, the outlets are in the most inconvenient spaces. I am NOT sitting on the floor of the Diana Center. That’s just a humiliation ritual. 

In places where there are outlets, like Lerner, they either don’t work, are inconveniently placed, or both. And don’t even get me started on outside. God forbid a girl try to catch some rays while studying, because if you don’t have a fully charged device, you are out of luck. It’s as though the administration is asking us to stow ourselves away in our dorms, doomed to study on tiny desks with no one but our roommates and the dorm mice to keep us company. 

Now you might say, “Just charge your computer overnight.” First of all, let me live my life. Second, everyones forgets things! We should not be punished for simply being human, especially by a school with a $14.8 billion endowment. You would think they would have the money to put in some conveniently placed indoor and outdoor plugs. Or at least ones that work.

Study Space via Bwog Archives