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Students start petition to "Save Clem 2" from new advising center

Online petition aims for 1,500 signatures

<p>This is the anticipated design for the second floor of Clemons.</p>

This is the anticipated design for the second floor of Clemons.

A Change.org petition titled “Save Clem 2” has been started in response to University plans to convert the second floor of Clemons Library into an advising center.

The new advising center will open in 2017. University President Teresa Sullivan has said the center is part of the University’s Cornerstone Plan, which makes “total advising” for students a priority.

The petition was started last Tuesday by first-year Nursing student Katherine Pitcher and her sister, third-year Engineering student Samantha Pitcher. It has since been signed by 1,048 supporters, with a stated goal of 1,500.

The idea for a petition began when the students heard their friends and peers discussing the transition of Clemons’ second floor, Samantha Pitcher said.

“It was basically a negative reaction overall,” she said. “We never heard anybody asking questions or trying to do anything.”

The opposition to the advising center is centered around the belief that Clemons’ second floor provides a unique study space for students, the Pitchers said. While only half of the floor will be used for the center, this could leave inadequate space for the amount of the library’s users, they said.

“We need another space for large groups to work late at night,” Katherine Pitcher said. “Clem 2 is just hard to replace, I guess.”

The space currently allows a large amount of students to work together on assignments ranging from group projects to lab reports. Clemons is also the only library on Grounds open 24 hours a day.

Maurie McInnis, University vice provost for academic affairs, has said Clemons was chosen because students wanted an advising center in a place they would already go.

The center will include services such as one-on-one career counseling, internship search assistance, assistance with financial services, and consultation about study-abroad experiences or undergraduate research.

The new space will include offices, study rooms, conference rooms, tutoring spaces, general study spaces and a café.

The goal of the petition is to raise awareness at the University, the Pitchers said. They said they hope that support will increase as students return to Grounds from Thanksgiving break.

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