You may have noticed some renovations happening around campus. West Penn has been undergoing changes for a while now, and Point Perk was welcomed to campus last year. The library, the shiny Playhouse’s next door neighbor, got a pretty big upgrade over the summer, and now the Academic Hall security desk is being totally redone.

This is great. A lot of Point Park’s buildings are pretty old, so upgrades are always necessary. However, most of the upgrades only seem to be happening in all of the places the public is able to see.

There are a lot of areas on campus that are extremely outdated and run down, and lot of these areas are only populated by students. For example, the Lawrence Hall fourth floor commuter lounge is the epitome of wasted potential. It’s a huge space, and would be a great place for commuters to call their home base, or even for clubs to host their events in. As of right now, it’s anything but. The furniture is old and worn out. The lighting is dull and depressing. The computers rarely work. The old piano in the corner is out of tune. The outlets are loose. We could go on.

This lounge is only one example of areas on campus that need a serious face lift. Other specific areas include the bathrooms in Academic Hall, which are all tiny, dark, and have an absurd number of doors for some reason. This also includes much of the Student Center, which is an extremely underused building on this campus.

We won’t even get started on dorm spaces, although, we understand that renovating Lawrence Hall’s 20 floors is most definitely a task that the university may not be prepared to undertake just yet.

We do ask that on-campus renovations don’t just simply occur in spaces that make the university look good on the outside and nowhere else on campus. Point Park is an amazing place to live and learn, and students deserve to do so in the best facilities possible.