Remember when Founders felt more like a tricked-out living room than a dentist office waiting room?
If you’re a sophomore or above, you can probably still easily drag up memories of shooting pool, playing ping-pong, reading the flyers wallpapering the lobby or just lounging the day away with friends in the pre-renovation Founders of last year.
Now, you’re lucky to see a student glance up at the glorified PowerPoint playing on a loop as they charge through to the Caf.
Nowadays, the Boren Lounge is used almost exclusively as an Early College hangout spot during the day. Other than Wednesday-night Senate meetings, the lounge is almost always completely empty once Early College students leave for the day.
According to Guilford’s website, the goal of the renovation was to create “an open, attractive and welcoming student center.” What exactly is welcoming about taking away everything fun about Founders and replacing it with an art-less room filled with chairs?
Now that Founders has gone paperless, flyers are formally forbidden. Instead, a couple of expensive flat-screen televisions run a slow loop of advertisements for on-campus events and important deadlines.
To see every announcement requires that you stand and stare at the monitor for a full 10 minutes. Make sure not to miss anything, because then you’ll have to wait through the entire cycle again. Campus Activities Board events have seen extremely low attendance this year, and it’s no coincidence that it happened to correspond with the new paperless Founders.
It’s time we take back Founders. This is supposed to be a space for students. Founders is supposed to be our place, not an impressive background for tours.
Compared with real community spaces like The Greenleaf and The Hut on campus, the new Founders Hall feels barren, heartless and just plain out of place.
The old Founders is gone forever. We can’t change that. What we can do is make sure that we are getting what we paid for, and what Guilford promised us: a welcoming, inclusive student space that’s more than a passageway to the cafeteria.
Editor‘s note: We received a message from Steve Moran who wanted to clarify a few details. They are listed below:
