It’s a beautiful Sunday morning, and you wake up – refreshed from the night before spent innocently watching Netflix with friends – and decide to make the trek over to the north side of campus. You have a lot of studying and homework to catch up on and decide that Rohrbach Library is just the place to do it. However, after having spent a half hour gathering your computer and textbooks and walking from your dorm to the library, you find that its doors are locked. Confused, you take a look at the hours of operation. The library doesn’t open until 2 p.m. on Sundays – it is 11:30 a.m. You walk back to your dorm in defeat.

I believe that it is time we change the library’s hours of operation. Specifically, I do not think it makes sense for the library to close at 5 p.m. on Saturdays and not open until 2 p.m. on Sundays. That is a wide gap of time in which someone could be writing papers, memorizing formulas, reading books or otherwise studying for tests.

Ideally, the library should be open 24 hours, seven days a week, but if that is not feasible, I have some alternate plans: Sunday 10:30 a.m.-Midnight, Monday-Thursday 7:30 a.m.-Midnight, Friday 7:30 a.m.-8p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m.-7:30 p.m.

Currently, the library opens at 7:45 a.m. on weekdays, giving the students unfortunate enough to take an 8 a.m. class mere moments if they need to print papers or want to grab a quick coffee. Oh wait, the library’s café doesn’t open until 8 a.m. on weekdays, so any sleep-deprived student (which they would be if they are taking a class before 10 a.m.) doesn’t even get a chance for some caffeine before they are forced to sit in the classroom. With my change of hours, though, every student and faculty member wishing to sip on a cup o’ joe now has the time early in the morning.

I don’t understand why the library and the café’s hours are different in the first place. It only makes sense that if the library is open, people are inside and working their brains to their fullest potential. Someone with an achy brain due to all the memorizing, reading and writing needs coffee, water, or a big chocolate chip cookie to feel a little bit better about themselves. If I am about to dig into a 700-page book on the French Revolution, I expect that I will be able to grab a coffee or ten in the library’s café.

Some of you reading this might mention that the library never seems overly-crowded on the weekends, and that is mostly because a lot of KU students go home on the weekends. I know from personal experience though, that come 1:57 p.m. on Sundays, there is a line already formed and getting annoyed that the library has not opened yet. Imagine their disappointment when they realize that the café doesn’t open until 3:30 p.m., and brain-dead and hung-over college students are trying their hardest not to start a riot.

Rohrbach’s hours might be shortened now because they are understaffed, or no one wants to work on the weekends. I can solve that problem with one motion: hire more KU students. We might not want to work on a Saturday until 7:30 p.m., but tell us we’ll work for minimum wage, and no one will turn that down. Students are always looking for easy ways to make money. I don’t think it gets easier than sitting at a desk in a library for a few hours. They can do their homework in peace, and so can I. Hire KU students to work the desks and café on the weekends, and no one will be disappointed.

By Mary Pickett