Starting out the new, spring semester, Northwest College students were notified upon their return that Einstein Brothers Bagel Shop—located in the Dewitt Student Center—would no longer be open on Saturdays and Sundays. Yet, one more blow of “nothing-to-do-here” for the students who reside on campus. And nowhere to really complain about it either.
In short, the campus is slowly transforming into a Monday-thru-Friday commuter campus that just happens to have dorms.
If you’re a campus resident who wants to hang around for the weekend, there’s little you can count on unless you go off campus—and Powell, Wyoming is hardly a town with a lot to offer. On campus, everything is pretty much locked down tight. And what little is available, you almost have to know the secret codes to access those spots. For example, if you want to get into Cabre Gym (even if you’re an athlete), you have to hope that someone is already in the building and is expecting you, or a door is already propped open by someone with a key (who has likely come and gone).
Art students who want to access the Art Department facilities should know that the only way to get in is through the back doors which are unlocked by a work-study student around 10:00 a.m. on the weekend mornings. Athletes should know this too since the gym and art facilities are in the same building.
The only thing you can count on as a campus resident is there will be a dining hall open as long as you get there during their hours of operation. That said, maybe in the not too distant future, the dining hall will close on the weekends and the students will be required to vacant the dorms on Fridays at 5:00 p.m. and return no earlier than 5:00 p.m. on Sundays.
And, a student newspaper is another campus asset that has been long-gone in the name of fiscal accountability.
If you should somehow and miraculously get inside a building/classroom on the weekend, you’ll want to keep your coat on because the physical plant drops the room temperatures down to at least 65 degrees on the weekends (and lower depending on the building’s HVAC functionality). However, in using another “secret code,” you can press the “Manual On” button on a given room’s thermostat and it will display “occupied.” Keep on pressing that button and it will allow the room to stay occupied for up to 90 minutes.
On this Super Bowl Sunday, I came into one of the Macintosh labs that was sitting at 65 degrees and after 90 minutes it was up to 70 degrees. I have since “reoccupied” to ensure that it stays at the 70-degree mark.
Saddest of all is that students don’t have much say any more in how things are around here. They can complain to some administrator’s office if they know who that is, but there’s nothing that truly empowers their complaint like a student newspaper reporting on such issues and holding the decision-makers to some degree of accountability. And, a student newspaper is another campus asset that has been long-gone in the name of fiscal accountability.
In summary, Northwest College has become a “meh” campus. It’s basically just another commuter, community college disguised as a “resident” campus because it has dorms. Yet, the nothing-to-do-on-the-weekend school is ironically 72 miles from Yellowstone’s East Gate, but that’s a topic for another day.