By
Shaun Clayton
Arizona Daily Wildcat
In the past two years, UA students have had to put up with a lot of changes - changes they may never benefit from, but may be beneficial to those who attend the university in the future.
The first of these changes, the Memorial Student Union, which has stood for nearly five decades, is being torn down and replaced with a new building
The second, a large portion of the Mall - the large, grassy heart of the campus - has been fenced off and taken over by the construction of the Integrated Learning Center, which will house classrooms and computer labs for incoming freshmen.
It is as if someone had taken a perfectly good house and made it impossible to go from one side to the other without walking outside, climbing onto the roof, and taking a ladder down through the ceiling into the bedroom.
These hardships for some are more than simple inconvenience - places like the Mall and the student union hold a lot of sentimentality as well.
Many students remember the Mall as it once was: a long stretch of grass right in the middle of campus with palm trees running the length of it. It was a place to throw a Frisbee, take a jog or just lie in the sun.
Older students may have fond recollections of the student union with Gallagher Theatre and Louie's Lower Level when it was a place to watch movies, play video games, use the computer lab or maybe watch a theater performance. There were many places to hang out, study or grab a bite to eat, and now those places are gone.
Of course, many also recall how the student union becomes almost as crowded as a sold-out rock concert during the lunch hour, how computer labs are almost always in short supply and how the first-year center is located unceremoniously in Bear Down Gym.
These new construction projects should remedy these problems.
The Integrated Learning Center will be a 119,032-square foot underground hub of student activity. It will include a large underground set of high-tech classrooms, a proper first-year center and a spacious computer lab and work study area known as the "Information Commons."
At 400,000 square feet, the new student union will be the largest student union in the country. That's almost ten square feet per student - a small dance floor, if the student so chooses.
The bad part is that projects such as these take time. The juniors and seniors at this university may not be here long enough to see these projects reach completion, and as such have had to suffer many an inconvenience with no benefits.
The bright spot in all this is that these projects are so huge and so encompassing that they will hopefully suit the needs of the UA and its students for decades to come - maybe making things a little easier.
Getting any sort of degree here is not an easy task. There are sleepless nights of study, hard days of homework and hours of class time. In considering that, maybe having college a little easier for future students is a worthwhile sacrifice for the students of the present.
