“It’s about time,” is what you’ll probably overhear most J-school students muttering in response to the college’s decision to move into a historical Horseshoe building. After over 40 years in the monolithic Carolina Coliseum and what’s likely been 40 years of complaints regarding the setting, they’re finally migrating to what’s said to be a more inspiring environment.
For a cool $25 million, the former Health Sciences building at the corner of Greene and Sumter streets will be renovated into an open environment where roughly 1,500 undergraduate and graduate students will take classes. When it’s all said and done, journalism and mass communications students will enjoy nearly double the space the Coliseum currently provides — and with windows. If the added room for activities isn’t swanky enough, the dean of the school has also touted the new space as both physically and philosophically appropriate for the present media landscape. Sounds vague … but we like it. If you don’t, there’s one certainty that should get you excited: its vastly improved location.
By moving into a central campus, students should find their commute far more streamlined. Its location will allow more flexibility when parking, and USC is bound to like the added foot traffic in its central campus. The move is also conscientious of the future, considering the business school’s looming migration that will neighbor the Carolina Coliseum. Such high volume schools right next to each other is a traffic headache waiting to happen. Thanks to the school’s foresight, we won’t ever have to go through that trouble.
But let’s get back to the building itself. While we’re not exactly experts on the psychological benefits of intelligent architecture, we’ve got no doubt that the new building will provide the kind of morale boost that any student, no matter their major, needs. Their current situation isn’t ideal, considering the Carolina Coliseum’s poor lighting, concrete walls and dated architecture. In this regard, having a nice space to work, study and learn is bound to pay dividends for many generations of J-school students to come. After over 40 years in the bomb shelter-esque Carolina Coliseum, the School of Journalism and Mass Communications deserve this.
There is one asterisk’s worth of bad news, though. Most current third- and fourth-year students won’t get to enjoy the new facilities when they open in August 2015. While it’s unfortunate they won’t benefit from the school’s investment, at least their future employers who Google the school will find the beautiful building and assume otherwise.
In any case, the school’s decision to evolve and better accommodate and prepare students for the ever-changing world of media is bound to payoff. $25 million is a hefty price tag, but so is the price of progress.