Brewing up ideas for social space

    Recently, Brown and Brew has begun closing at 11 p.m. during the week and remaining closed on weekends, much to the chagrin of the five or six students who frequent the Brew that late. Yes, there are occasionally students between about 213 College Ave Avenue and Halligan Hall at 12:30 a.m. on Tuesday nights, jonesing for a Roadrunner and a packet of pita chips, and they have found their hopes for a coffee-based beverage and a collegiate atmosphere most cruelly dashed.
    While debate has raged fiercely in the last six months over the wisdom of removing the couches from our venerable coffeehouse (some students called the move "bad" because the couches were comfortable; others called it "good" because the couches were gross), arguments reached a shrill but decidedly muted crescendo in the last week as the management of Brown and Brew elected to shut down operations after 11 p.m. and on weekends. Thwarted Tuftonians can be found wandering the streets, complaining that coffee from Hodgdon is "too commercial," wallowing sadly in their collective despair.
    In all seriousness, the new closing times affect very few Tufts students, although the Brew does serve a segment of campus that is removed from other dining establishments.
    In fact, to hear people talk about the charm of Brown and Brew is to be bombarded with names of other such hangouts and eateries: The Tower Café has a "library atmosphere," Hotung is too distracting and the rest of the campus center is too boring/loud/quiet/small. Brown and Brew too receives its fair amount of critiques from students who find it too far away for their needs.
    The common thread in such complaints is that there simply is not a central place on campus that fulfils students' needs, be it for socializing, studying or staving off starvation.
    The campus center, designed (in theory) to fill these needs, is woefully divided. If you want to do a mix of socializing and studying, you often need to physically move from place to place.
    What Tufts needs is a central location where students can do all of the above — not in separate rooms, but in a big, open atrium where hundreds of students can gather without feeling that they are violating the "purpose" of the room. The current campus center, constructed in the 1970s in a way that suggests an administration's fear of rioting, simply cannot serve this purpose.
    The Hotung renovations are excellent — for Hotung. The change in furniture in front of the Commons is an improvement — for the Commons. The game room has enhanced equipment, but it is not big enough or open enough to be inviting to a large number of students. Right now, Tufts has a place where students can find everything that they need, but what Tufts really needs is a place students can enter without a purpose and find something to do. That is where you will find the Tufts students of tomorrow.
    This is a dream that will likely be unfulfilled; it is an enormous project that would require huge amounts of money that is currently earmarked for a new sports center, new science corridors and other worthy projects. But it is a dream nonetheless. We at the Daily offer this thought not with an expectation that we will see it completed, but with a hope that it will be considered. Until that happens, you can find us … well, somewhere.