McFarlin’s South door is currently labeled for emergency exits only, but opening it for regular use would make students’ lives easier.
The McFarlin South Door: infamous in its endless emergency exit-ness. It frustrates all of us that wander from Oliphant, Zink, Kendall, or any other assortment of southwardly oriented buildings on campus. How convenient would it be to simply walk directly through the gaping double doors opening into the main arena of the library? Enter from or exit into the courtyard made to enjoy a brisk spring afternoon with an engaging book?
This concept seems to be a dream to me; some wild wandering of my mind one afternoon. Why should that be the case? Yes, I am being melodramatic, and it is merely an inconvenience. It seems to be an entirely unnecessary inconvenience though. Those doors were not originally intended as an emergency exit, and it would surely be quite nice to walk directly into the café when I am sprinting to classes in the mornings.
Perhaps the logic is that it is an unnecessary door because it does not face a parking lot, or even the main fairway. There is a decent size populace walking from the southward direction: athletes, apartment-livers, English, Communications, Languages, Anthropology majors, so on and so forth. Additionally, people walk to the library in the daylight hours because of a lack of a McFarlin parking pass. Of course, it’s a matter of walking a hundred yards or so further, but those steps are crucial at 8:54 and by god, you need a cup of coffee! Or you desperately needed to print something and you have to hotfoot it to your class in Tyrell Hall. Every second counts when you are racing the clock, and those exit doors could be the shortcut you needed, rather than going out of the front steps and trying to parkour your way over the bushes.
So maybe there is a determinate reason for those southward-facing doors to be ever occupied by emergency exit signs, but if there is not, let’s pop those bad boys open and let us experience our library to its fullest capabilities.
