By: Lauren Young
Xavier University senior Andrew Elluru created a petition to extend the Conaton Learning Commons’ new hours. Ideally, the goal is to have the hours return to last year’s 24/5 policy.
Elluru’s attempt can be seen as successful due to the Xavier weekly email that was sent out on Monday morning. The email’s first announcement was that the CLC’s hours would be restored to the original 24/5, but only for the finals weeks of the fall semester. The new hours will begin the Sunday after Thanksgiving and will continue on through the Thursday of finals week in December.
What few people know about is the process that occurred behind the scenes. Upon being notified of the CLC’s shortened hours, Elluru was quite confused as well as frustrated as to why Xavier would put limitation on such a valued student resource.
“Many of my friends and colleagues expressed shock and bewilderment…some of the reaction I received was downright angry,” Elluru said. After realizing he wasn’t the only one who was bothered by the new hours, Elluru was motivated to speak up.
Elluru composed his statement and to his amazement, received a lot of feedback in a short amount of time. “I tweeted a link to the petition from my personal Twitter account one morning, and later on in the day when checking my Facebook, I saw that someone had posted the link to their page and it had been shared over 30 times. I was shocked,” Elluru said. He even got the attention of Student Government Association President Drew Dziedzic, who reached out to him for further information.
Elluru expressed his love for Xavier University and how he felt it was his duty to try and make this issue that affects a number of students, better. He remained positive throughout the process in regards to how the administration would respond.
“I definitely feel as if the administration will understand our concerns (and) I truly believe that at the very least a compromise of some sort will be developed,” Elluru said.
The administration has taken Elluru’s and many other students’ concerns into consideration by extending the CLC’s hours to 24/5 during the week of and leading up to the fall semester’s finals week. In terms of whether or not these hours will continue on into 2014 is unknown at this point.
