Fairfield University plans to build six classrooms on the second floor of the DiMenna-Nyselius Library, The Mirror has learned. The plan would result in the removal of 56 seats and over 65,000 volumes of books.
Although an official announcement has not yet been made, several emails sharing the news have been sent by faculty members. Those in the university community have begun expressing their dissatisfaction with the plan.
Student Maeve O’Connell, a senior who works at the front desk in the library, says she and the library staff found out about the plan after a meeting took place in the library. She is concerned over noise levels and space once the renovation is completed.
“I think it’s a really bad location for so many reasons,” O’Connell said of the new classroom locations. “It just makes no sense because it’s a library to house books. Taking away over 65,000 books is just not good for the library itself.”
Professor and Faculty Welfare Committee President Sonya Huber shared in an email to committee members that library staff were told of the plans just before spring break. One staff member, who choose to remain anonymous, provided the following statement in the email:
“We found out yesterday afternoon (3/5), from our Dean of the library, that there will be 6 classrooms built on the upper level of the library. The decision was made without the Dean of the library or any data about library building usage,” the staff member said. “The Dean was informed by the provost that this will happen even though survey data shows students want more study space.”
According to the statement provided by the staff member, survey data from the library shows that students want more group study rooms and seating spaces for individual and collaborative work. The Mirror was not able to independently verify the feedback data from the library mentioned in the statement.
“Despite sharing this data, there was no reversing the decision,” they added.
According to the email, contractors have begun preparation for the renovation, including measuring and checking the building for asbestos. Further, Huber says that the library committee was not consulted or informed of the plans before these steps began.
No building plans have been submitted to the Town Plan and Zoning Commission as of March 17.
Huber created and shared with The Mirror a Google Docs titled “Save the Stacks!” where students, faculty and any others with concerns over the plan can share their thoughts. The document also contains more detailed information like the amount of books being removed as well as scholarly articles citing the importance of college libraries.
“The re-appropriation of library space for new classrooms is an academic concern, because access to the resources and the quiet spaces in the library affects our ability to teach our students and affects their ability to learn,” she says in the document’s introduction.
One of the document’s statements comes from English professor Nick Allred, who shared that he uses the library’s collection for his research and teaching.
“Fairfield’s large physical library collection for a school our size is a not-insignificant selling point for me as a faculty member,” Allred said. “I’m also extremely disturbed by the message it sends to downsize our library space: an unmistakable contempt for scholarship, particularly humanities scholarship which relies on monographs (especially older ones, which are less likely to be digitized). What message does this send to students? To prospective faculty and peers? This is selling the car to pay for gas money.”
An anonymous comment on the document offers a different perspective, speaking to the rising number of students attending Fairfield and the need to accommodate the school’s population with new spaces. The writer shares, “I, too, am frustrated that this was done without faculty governance input, but the administration does have to act – classrooms can’t be built overnight. Many committees only meet once a month and sometimes agenda items are pushed to the next meeting. The students are coming and classrooms need to be built. Where else should they go? If someone else has a viable plan to add more classroom space for Fall 2025, we should be discussing that immediately.”
According to the same statement, Fairfield’s incoming class of 2029 is estimated to include about 1,450 students, while the class of 2025 has about 1,100 students.
The growing size of Fairfield has led to other recent and upcoming expansions of campus buildings, including the plan to convert part of the Media Center building into a sophomore residence hall.
With an increased amount of students, there’s a need for more space in areas like housing and academics. However, many faculty members and students don’t see the library as a viable option for classrooms and instead want the building to remain a quiet space.
“All the students in there will be so distracted with people coming in and out of the classrooms,” O’Connell said. “There’s already one classroom downstairs, imagine six of them at the same time…I feel like students are not gonna want to use the library to study. It defeats the purpose of the library.”
An anonymous student in the class of 2025 wrote the following on the shared document: “So many students use the library to get all their work done. Having disruptions from classes coming in and out would be very distracting. I do not support this. The library should be a quiet, safe place where people can go and be productive, or just relax and get some peace and quiet.”
Another “anonymous and tired” faculty member also noted the levels of noise that teaching can require, emphasizing their belief that classrooms are not practical within a quiet library setting.
“Teaching is loud–we are too loud to be housed in the library,” they wrote. “This need seems temporary to account for the increase of students.”
If the plan continues, some library staff worry about how this will affect their day-to-day jobs in addition to students’ academics.
“The one [current] classroom versus a total of seven is going to be so much more disruptive. We already get complaints at the front desk from students when there is a lot of talking–it’s going to be a lot for all the workers at the library.”
The Mirror reached out to Fairfield’s Vice President for Marketing and Communications Jennifer Anderson and Dean of the Library Christina McGowan for comment but did not hear back in time for publication.