Council members say they are also dissatisfiedwith the half-hearted efforts to bring technologyto the commons.
At this point commons architects are planning atechnology room featuring a fax machine, a copymachine--and just two computers.
Council members say the two lone computers,planned before the recent explosion in the use ofelectronic mail, are woefully insufficient to meetstudent demands.
HASCS Director Franklin M. Steen agrees.
"The committee showed me a room in the back,"Steen says of a recent tour through the commons."I think they thought of it as a place for peopleto do papers or homework, but we know thatstudents use e-mail and the [World Wide] Web muchmore frequently and that's what they wantcomputers like that for."
"I was encouraging them to add more, to expandinto kiosks," Steen says.
Flexible?
The administration responds to most of thecouncil's complaints by saying that policies areunder discussion and certainly are not set instone.
And all of the administrators interviewed saythat the commons will evolve as students' needsbecome apparent.
"We have an open space," Parsons says. "Bydefinition that means it's extremely flexible."
Coffey says that he has been very pleased bythe administration's response. But Coffey says hewill wait to see if changes will really occur inresponse to students' needs.
"Great, I'm pleased if administrators will workwith us," Coffey remarks. "But there is a bigdifference between working with us and makingpolicy changes."