Recently, UW-Eau Claire announced the library’s all-night hours are no longer in effect due to budget cuts. The library is often the only escape for students who need to study or do research. Cutting the all-night hours while leaving other non-educational programs alone gives a bad impression to the students about what is important to this university.

Often times my house is too loud to get any real studying done. Since I work all day, my study hours are often after midnight. The library was my second home for many late nights last year – mostly for a quiet study area, but also for a place of information gathering.

It is true that many of the library’s resources are currently available through the Internet, but many times the physical library is required to do any real research. Some may argue that the library is open enough hours throughout the day for students to get their research done during those times.

There are always the procrastinators, such as myself, who often wait until a few days or the night before a project is due to start it. And other students may need to use the library resources late at night because they honestly need to do something at the last minute.

With the shortened hours, what message is the university sending to students? Funding to a learning environment is being cut, while some non-essential university-sponsored programs are left with funding. Although budget cuts were applied to many areas of the university, I have not heard of sports programs experiencing additional budget cuts.

The university seems to care more about its outward appearance than it does about the actual inner-workings and quality of educational services students use. It spends a lot of time and money improving our lawns and landscaping to make the campus more appealing so Eau Claire can keep saying it is “one of Wisconsin’s most beautiful campuses.”

The beautiful campus may impress some people and attract some students to the university, but once the students are here, the university should continue to offer the services that make it a quality institution.

Through these acts, the university tells its students that a quality learning and studying environment is not a high priority here.

As the university strives toward “excellence,” cutting programs that offer educational assistance should not even be considered. The university should take a good look at what programs it is cutting and see if there are other, less-essential programs that could be cut first.