In 1990, D.H. Hill Library closed its Hillsborough entrance, because too many students simply used the building as a cut-through from the street to the Brickyard without taking advantage of library amenities. This was disruptive to those attempting to use the library as a study space, and made the already limited seating available for students trying to do work even more sparse.

These complaints were filed by students who were driven, academically minded and serious about their own success. Walk into the library today and you’ll see dozens just like them, almost two decades later, filling up the lobby and the study rooms of the west wing. Many students agree that it’s just the place to go, especially on North Campus, when they need a quiet place to study or work hard.

Now, renovations beginning May 2019 are coming to turn all of that on its head. By the time construction is done, students will be able to see up from the ground floor to the stacks via a central staircase which connects them. The Hillsborough entrance will be reopened, and additional traffic will be generated as students bounce between the various services offered on all the floors. In addition to making less space to study, what little is left around the lobby and digital media lab will be rendered virtually unusable by constant disruptions. It is unclear to what extent the west wing and other study spaces will be affected.

The position of Student Success & Engagement Librarian was also created to help direct students to the various services being consolidated into this new space, officially called the Academic Success Center, as well as to coordinate workshops and pop-up and special events, including Packapalooza. It is also unclear what will happen to the game space, makerspace, engineering lab and other resources on the various floors which will be completely rearranged.

My question is, who asked for this? Students, as they proved in 1990, just want Hill to be a quiet space, where they won’t be judged if they don’t leave the library for 48 hours during finals week. Students want somewhere they can be surrounded by the sounds of pencils scratching and keyboards typing to motivate them to study harder, somewhere they can go to escape the rush of college living.

We get that NC State administration wants the university to be on the cutting edge of technology and always be innovative and new. We get that they want for D.H. Hill to keep up with Hunt Library on Centennial campus, with its fancy immersion theater, Dataspace and Teaching & Visualization Lab. But each library fills a niche: Hunt for conferences, guest speakers and events, and Hill for students who need to get away from all that.

Adding to this concern, the construction project itself has undergone a slew of price hikes and postponements since its inception in 2016. The original project proposal estimated the renovations would cost about $9.3 million and be completed July 2018. A press release by NCSU Libraries in February 2017 then estimated that construction would be underway for “most of 2018” and finish in the fall. Now, renovation is slated to begin May 2019, cost $16 million and end in August 2020. Why the continuous delays and the sudden spike in costs? There are just too many questions surrounding this project when considering the major impact it will have on students.

I say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It seems as if the university is dedicating valuable time and resources to this project which could be used for better things – like filling the gigantic hole behind Carmichael Gym. Students didn’t ask for the library to change; we have few enough study spaces around campus as it stands. Caldwell Lounge is always full to bursting during class hours, and you’d be hard pressed to find an unoccupied table, let alone a study room in Hill around exam time.

Administration is making decisions for us in the name of “progress” without considering what students actually want from the facilities which are meant for them. Not everything has to be shiny and new all the time; sometimes students just want to sit down on an old table worn smooth by time, lean back and hear the creak of a wooden chair, feel the weight of the stacks and take a breath in the silence their predecessors won for them at that very same D.H. Hill Library almost 20 years ago.