Don’t get us wrong: We love Russell House, for the most part.
We love the fact that a student can walk into the building and grab a wide variety of food, from Asian food to falafel burgers. We love the movies that Carolina Productions puts on. (The fact that admission is free is pretty cool, too.) We love the atmosphere created by students milling around.
It makes Russell House feel like the heart of campus that, for the most part, it is.
But despite all of this, there are major issues which deserve some consideration.
The most obvious problem with Russell House is overcrowding. Nobody who enters the building has failed to see the lines stuffed with people, especially at lunchtime. While the addition of “to-go” lines has streamlined the process to some extent, there continues to be backup.
This wouldn’t be so bad, if there weren’t some places in the building students virtually never use.
Seniors, when’s the last time you went to the off-campus student lounge? How about the Golden Spur Gameroom? The glassed-in meeting rooms on the third floor find occasional use, but are far from frequented.
Additionally, new construction projects, like the new business school and the prospective private dorm, will move the student population further away from Russell House than ever before.
It is time to consider the possibility of a second student center, located somewhere more convenient to those structures, and that project should be a bigger priority for the university.
Whether or not such a project is feasible in the short term is a conversation for another day. What matters now is that we use the space we have to the student body’s utmost advantage.
In the past, the school looked at Russell House and its amenities and decided that things like a bowling alley and bar simply weren’t necessary. They weren’t serving students as well as they could.
Discussion like this is essential to keeping USC’s student union both current and useful.
And given the traffic some of the union’s spots sees, we think it may be time to have that conversation again.