As with any milestone, even those artificially created by alcohol laws, this birthday affords a good occasion to look back on the history of the Campus Center. As the baby pictures displayed in the atrium last week showed, the building has changed much over its short life. The Campus Center was built in the mid-1980s, shortly after the College became co-ed, as a reaction to the Trustees’ decision to eliminate fraternities. The Center, as envisioned, would provide social space and serve as the seat of student life. The centrally located building would serve as a permanent, dedicated home for a number of resources heretofore shoehorned into Fayerweather or wherever else there was room. The Friedman (nee Front) Room replaced Fayerweather’s Back Room. The Snack Bar relocated from Valentine.
As the College has changed over the last 21 years, so has the Campus Center. The Student and WAMH offices moved out of the basement of Morris Pratt into renovated offices on the second floor of Keefe in the late 1990s. The McCaffery Room was converted from a small reception room into the new home of the game room as the Center for Community Engagement moved in to the building last fall. Last spring, the Center’s newest tenant, the Multicultural Resource Center, moved into the old AAS office. At the same time, other student-group space has been created in the basements of James and Morrow Dormitories.
With all of the changes to the Campus Center, it has begun to move away from its original mission. More than any other move, the addition of the CCE has helped transform Keefe from a student center into a center that serves the whole campus and beyond. No longer does the big yellow building exist simply as a social space; it now better reflects the mission of the College and its position in both the local and global communities.
At the same time, the occasion of one’s 21st birthday gives the humbling chance to look ahead to the future. As most any 21-year-old senior will tell you, this is a very intimidating thought. Just like the College’s seniors, about to leave Amherst behind and go out into the “real world,” the Campus Center is approaching a time of change. Simply by virtue of its location, Keefe is set to be a cornerstone for the envisioned East Campus reconstruction. The aging studentgroup space in the basement of Pond will need to be replaced, and the time is right to make some changes to Keefe.
A full-scale evaluation of space-use in Keefe should be undertaken so that the East Campus project can best allocate new space created and any space renovated in Keefe to best use. The MRC is deserving of a more prominent location than the back corner of the basement of the Campus Center. More than any other student group, the AAS, which represents all students, needs to find a permanent home where it can serve the student body.
While Schwemm’s Coffee House, the Game Room and the study space in Keefe are very well used, the conference rooms and office space allocations should be reevaluated. With the rebuilding of the East Campus, the back entrance of Keefe will need to be expanded. It is time to turn the Campus Center into a showpiece for the campus, so that it doesn’t look out of place surrounded by the rebuilt social quad, a (possibly) renovated Merrill, and the still shiny and new Natural History Museum.
After 21 good years, Keefe was probably hoping for a more lavish reception than the guava punch and cupcakes in the atrium last week. In its youth, the Campus Center snack bar served wine and beer on tap, and the atrium hosted TAP at least once a year. Those days are over. As Keefe moves into adulthood, it has finally begun to mature into a true Campus Center, rather than a student center or a social center. The future, perhaps, will see it become a centerpiece for a changing campus.