A petition to open the University Center 24 hours, 7 days a week has gained 500 signatures over the past two weeks, meeting more than half of its goal. 

Jerome Cheung, a senior in fashion design at Parsons School of Design, started the petition on March 25. In the description section, he expressed concern for his education since he has been unable to use campus space to complete his projects on time, which sometimes require several hours of work and resources he can only access on campus.

The description said, “As a design student at The New School, I find myself in a predicament. I cannot work on my projects at home as all the industrial sewing machines are located within the school premises.” He also stated that many students and professors were encouraging him to start the petition. 

On April 15, the school is set to change the building hours, making it open all day and night so that students can complete their work during finals season. But Cheung’s main goal is to have TNS open 24 hours a day throughout the entire school year, not just for a few weeks during finals. 

Before COVID-19, certain buildings at TNS were open 24/7, which Cheung claims allowed students to have full access to resources and workspaces based on their projects’ needs and schedules. He said, “Now, as we adapt and learn to live with COVID-19, it is time for us to return to pre-pandemic systems.” 

Gretchen Nelson, a sophomore BFA fashion design student at Parsons, agreed with Cheung. “I think all of us have very heavy workloads, especially the BFA students, and especially because a lot of our work requires physical 3D work, and those resources most of us do not have at home.” She said that many other students need special equipment that is only accessible in the TNS buildings. 

Brianna Bennett, a junior photography student at Parsons said that the school’s resources should be accessible at any time due to the high price of tuition. “It is a good idea simply on the basis that we pay a god awful amount of money in tuition.”  

Marie Genevieve Cyr, Director of BFA Fashion and Assistant Professor Of Fashion Design, emailed Cheung to express her interest in the matter: “Our team has been working with the Executive Dean and the building team for many weeks on this.”

The program administrator from the Parsons BFA Fashion Design program also wrote to Cheung and said, “We know how important it is to open the facilities full time for thesis work,” but they expressed concern for safety issues if the school is open 24/7. They said, “There was a recent fire late at night in one of the studios, so extra precautions are being taken as they prepare for 24/7 hours.”

With the announcement that the school is facing a major financial crisis, some students felt concerned about allocating more funds to pay security and staff to cover the extra time. 

Bennett also said that another possible downside would be that tuition costs could increase due to the demand of security working more hours to keep the school open all night. 

Cheung believes that the cost of extra hours logged for guards is a concern for the administration, but hopes that tuition will not see an increase from it.  

With TNS potentially opening 24 hours a day, students themselves might develop bad habits in regard to health and wellness. Nelson said that there were times she would work for too long and forget about sleep. She noted that if students practiced healthy studying habits and took care of each other, the new hours wouldn’t be a bad influence on students. She said, “I’ve had security guards come in and check on me before and other students that I’ve been working with. That kind of stuff is good.”

“I know that injuries do tend to happen more, especially in sewing machines, when it’s late, and you’re tired, and you’re stressed. It’s easy to use the machines wrong…then there aren’t teachers around and it will have to be guards who would deal with that. So it is a little bit more difficult, and it requires more training,” Cheung said. 

In the petition’s description, Cheung also added that the all-night UC operation hours are not just about convenience but, “about providing equal opportunities for all students regardless of their living situations or personal circumstances. It’s about fostering an environment conducive to learning, creativity, and productivity.”