The Linux Lab has been the home to the Computer Science clubs including the Stevens Game Development Club and Stevens Cyber Defense Team since 2011, although the lab itself had all of its physical workstations removed a few years ago. The inner part of the lab, the SGDC room was set up with beanbag chairs, carpet, comfortable office chairs, monitors, a projector, and a center table so that the club would have a place to work. Over time the room began to see more use not just by SGDC. At virtually all hours of the day, a thriving community of CS students could be found in the lab doing homework, talking about tech news, holding meetings and office hours, or even just watching Cosmos on the projector. We came to think of the lab as a second home. We set up extra desktops to test ideas, we fixed up some of the broken furniture, and made our own improvements like a whiteboard and a central power strip. We would often share things in the lab. When we discovered a derelict laptop charger that nobody ever claimed as theirs, it became known as “the community charger” and everyone took turns using it to charge their laptops. It was our space.
About a month or so ago the lab was visited by several people including the provost. We overheard them talking about repurposing the room for something else. We were concerned, of course, over the possible loss of our lab, but weeks passed without us hearing anything else about it. That all changed on March 25, when we tried to put a movie on the overhead projector and noticed the screen was gone. We contacted the CS department to ask if the screen was removed by them. One of us began writing an email to Professor Duchamp while the someone else discovered a discarded portable projector screen in a closet and set it up to continue our movie. Then we got the news. Professor Duchamp told us that the department had removed the screen to put it in a Lieb conference room and that the projector would soon follow. He said that in the coming weeks the room would be gutted. He was working to find a replacement room for the CS clubs but wasn’t optimistic. We in the lab were devastated. There was of course talk about staging some sort of protest but we understood it would be useless. Stevens needed more space and to them this was a deserted computer lab with no computers. It was more than that to us though. We have no idea when the lab will finally be closed to us or what it will turn into.
At the SGDC meeting that night we talked about our “evacuation plan” to remove our vast collection of books, prototyping tools, board games, and game consoles from the room. We’re still not sure where they’ll end up but in the worst case they’ll be stored in the apartments of the eboard members and transported to whatever classroom we’re meeting in. It definitely sucks to have a club space and then lose it.
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