Stress is part of being a college student. Whether it comes from papers, exams or relationships, stress is ubiquitous. Thankfully, the library alleviates some of the finals week chaos by providing free coffee and tea after midnight.  However, as finals weeks have shown, stores of coffee and tea are limited and often run out. 

Not that students are ungrateful, quite the opposite. However, Loyola could perfect its efforts to help keep the student body as stress free as possible during finals week. After all, it should be safe to assume that less stress means better performance. 

So far, Mission and Ministry, along with the library for its free coffee, deserves the most credit for its work to eradicate stress on campus through their biannual mass and pancakes event.

What else can be done? The Orleans Room could extend its hours, free coffee could be consistently available in the library and expanded to the other major academic buildings, napping zones could be established in the library and stations could be set up in every major academic building to provide free pens and pencils. It is the little things that keep stress low. It only takes one forgotten scantron or one missed breakfast to seriously affect a student’s ability to focus on a final. 

We can look to other universities for examples of how to keep the stress down during finals week.  Drexel University provides free massages during finals week. MIT, in a more creative effort, offers free deodorant samples to reduce reading room stench. A quick look around the collegiate universe shows plenty of creative solutions that could be implemented here at Loyola.

Of course, like anything this will require funding. Several possible sources come to mind, the first being sponsorships.  Portland State University finds corporate sponsors such as Starbucks to provide coffee for their students at no cost. 

The second, and most feasible source of revenue to support the de-stressing of the student body is the coffers of the student organizations such as SGA and RHA. Their budgets are to be spent on students, and finals are something that affect all students.  SGA has jurisdiction all over campus and could perhaps reallocate some funds from events like Loup Garou to buy more coffee, fruit, etc.

RHA is limited to the residential halls, but as 35 percent of students and 73 percent of freshmen live on campus, providing coffee, massages and food in the lobbies of the residential halls would have serious benefits.

Not to be forgotten, the departments themselves could host stress-free study sessions with free coffee, bean bag chairs, and perhaps even some professors to answer questions. This would bring together students with similar tests and similar study needs. It would also allow for younger students with lesser experience in the department to seek out help from upperclassmen. 

How nice would it be if the coffee flowed like the wines of Babylon, the massages were given out as liberally as government handouts and the free pens were as numerous as the fish that swim through the sunken city of Atlantis? 

Loyola can be more stress free, and the solutions are simple and doable. 

This editorial is the majority opinion
of the editorial board named above.