Students have a myriad of options for study spaces this year — from reserved rooms to unoccupied areas around campus — but some students said University options are not always accessible or appealing.
The Student Room Scheduling portal, introduced via email by the Dean of Students on Oct. 13, allows students to select any of the 62 available rooms –– more than half of which are single-occupancy –– on the Charles River Campus for up to 10 hours a week. Study room locations are in the George Sherman Union and Mugar Memorial Library, among other buildings.
Aside from the website, students can also use vacant spaces across campus, which can be found in the Metcalf Science Center, Questrom School of Business, Mugar, GSU and College of General Studies.
Fayrouz Farhane, a senior in the College of Communication who commutes to campus from Malden, Mass., said she often reserves editing bays — small, private rooms with an iMac computer, available exclusively to COM students — on the third floor of the COM building through the college’s Location Reservation web page.
COM students can request a specific room and time slot up until an hour before the spaces close at 9 p.m., Farhane said. The rooms are monitored by supervising assistants or technicians.
Farhane said she uses the rooms to do homework after attending a night class Thursdays.
“I commute to school,” Farhane said, “which really affects my ability to use on-campus services.”She said she is unable to access Mugar because she doesn’t have an active Terrier Card required to swipe in.
“I used to be able to just walk into the library like every other normal BU student,” Farhane said.
Farhane said she wasn’t aware of the Study Spaces efforts until recently and wishes the opportunity had been better advertised.
“It’d be cool if the professors said it in class,” Farhane said. “We get so many emails. It’s hard to filter through that stuff.”
Aira Cosino, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, said she used a classroom on the fourth floor of CAS earlier in the semester. The hallway, she said, is “a ghost town” and usually has open classrooms.
Cosino said she has stopped using the space following the theft of her iPad and laptop from an open classroom.
“I’m a [computer science] major, and everything is on those two devices,” Cosino said.
After she “panicked,” Cosino said was able to track down her items using the Find My app. She later confronted the thief in Cambridge, where he returned her items to her.
Cosino said after this incident, she realized campus security is an unaddressed issue at BU because students with access to campus facilities can often act without oversight from security guards or cameras.
“Anyone can go in and out of most, if not all, BU buildings,” Cosino said.
Cosino said she now studies in her room because she is “scared” to do otherwise after the theft.
CAS senior Richard Cho said because of the pandemic, he is cautious when selecting study zones.
“I don’t go out to study in any spaces,” Cho said. “Especially in this semester, I just pretty much study in my room.”
Cho said he is wary of BU’s COVID-19 cleaning and sanitization enforcement for on-campus study spaces available for reservation, which require that students wipe down surfaces before and after using the room.
“There will be students that don’t enforce the rules,” Cho said. “They’re not going to wipe down before and after they use the rooms.”
Marisa Arellano is a freshman in CAS who uses the open study spaces in her residence, Rich Hall, every day. She said she thinks using open study areas is more convenient than making a reservation through Study Spaces.
“The ones you have to reserve, that’s a lot of walking,” Arellano said, “and as it gets colder, it seems out of the way.”
