Recently, there have been some complaints about the state of the student lounge in Melissa’s room. The student lounge is located at the end of the main hallway on the right, more or less across from the Art room. Melissa’s room doubles as the lounge, and Helen’s office is in there as well.

Apparently, as was mentioned in Day-to-Day committee on November 17^th by numerous people, a lot of undesirable and unpleasant activities have been taking place in our nice new lounge. People have been making out on couches, dirtying up the room with their trash, and piling up on said couches. Gamers have been spending hours and hours there, presumably not going to class and just plain goofing off. People are watching movies on their computers with speakers instead of headphones, driving Melissa and Helen insane. The room is noisy, to the point where you can’t really hear yourself speak.

What makes things worse is that people from colleges are coming into the room with Melissa, and quite frankly, it’s an embarrassment to our school. Everything is dirty, it’s very loud, and it’s not the scene we want colleges or any visitors for that matter, to judge our school on. It has gotten to the point where Helen says that she is going to go out and buy a new door so that she can hear herself think and so that she can work in her office.

A lot of the proposals brought up in the meeting had to do with setting up designated study times in the lounge. This would create times when you would have to be quiet and times when you can be loud. But the opposition to this is that the lounge wasn’t meant to be a study place in the first place, and that’s exactly why it’s called a lounge.

There is certainly a demand for the lounge to be a safe space to study. We share a building with the SBOC, and at any point in time you might be kicked off of the computers or the tables in the library because a class from that program needs to get their work done. Once that happens, what space do student have to study in? The lounge is one of the best places you could go to study, except for the fact that everyone is loud and obnoxious to the point that Melissa and Helen are going to drastic measures.

The problems we face in the lounge are a byproduct of the general disrespect that is running rampant in our school. Recently the hall by the cafetorium that houses Joleen’s and Sheri’s rooms had all the tables that were being used for studying removed because people were just too loud and messy, prohibiting others from working. So this isn’t just the Lounge we’re talking about, it’s the entire building.

The Lounge is one of the only reliable study spaces Nova has. We had another one for a while, but as you heard, that got taken away because it was just too loud. And I think the Lounge is in danger of ending the same way. In the past, Joleen’s hallway was used for studying, but we were reminded many times that if we were quiet, we could stay and chat as well. We ruined it. Let’s not ruin it this time.

For a counterpoint to this article, check out Con: Why the Lounge as a Study Space Doesn’t Make Sense