2008 Woodie Awards
Campus comfort
Amanda S. Piper
Issue date: 4/4/07 Section: Opinion
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The Idaho Falls satellite campus is full of traditional and non-traditional students. With every semester that comes and goes, the campus becomes more appealing. There are several reasons for this, but most of them boil down to one thing: comfortable accommodations.
The differences between the two campuses are astonishing. The major difference in comfort is in the classroom. The Idaho Falls classrooms have table and chair seating. This is nothing like the Pocatello campus, whose seats are a miniature top attached impossibly close and low to a hard, inflexible chair. In these times smaller things are usually more popular, but this is one case where bigger is better. There are many advantages of having table-and-chair style furniture.
The first advantage is the ability to move the chair. Although this especially helps tall people, students who are short or of average height also benefit. A short student fits at the table by scooting the chair closer. A tall student scoots the chair back. In each case people are reasonably comfortable.
The second group of people to benefit from this setting is larger people. "Larger" means average people by today's standards, pregnant, overweight, or muscle-bound. Anyone in this category can adjust to a comfortable distance from the top. For example, Ashley Ibarra is pregnant, but is glad that in the Idaho Falls classrooms she doesn't have to sit sideways in the chair to accommodate her growing belly.
We all know someone from the third group who benefits from this: lefties. The desks at Pocatello have desktops smaller than a notebook, and to make it worse they are on the right hand side. No lefty can sit comfortably and face forward in these desks. In contrast, the table-and-chair furniture in Idaho Falls accommodates lefties.
A final group of people may or may not also fit the categories listed above. This is a growing group whom we affectionately refer to as techies. No, not trekkies! Techies. These people come to class with their laptops, books, paper, and pens.
The differences between the two campuses are astonishing. The major difference in comfort is in the classroom. The Idaho Falls classrooms have table and chair seating. This is nothing like the Pocatello campus, whose seats are a miniature top attached impossibly close and low to a hard, inflexible chair. In these times smaller things are usually more popular, but this is one case where bigger is better. There are many advantages of having table-and-chair style furniture.
The first advantage is the ability to move the chair. Although this especially helps tall people, students who are short or of average height also benefit. A short student fits at the table by scooting the chair closer. A tall student scoots the chair back. In each case people are reasonably comfortable.
The second group of people to benefit from this setting is larger people. "Larger" means average people by today's standards, pregnant, overweight, or muscle-bound. Anyone in this category can adjust to a comfortable distance from the top. For example, Ashley Ibarra is pregnant, but is glad that in the Idaho Falls classrooms she doesn't have to sit sideways in the chair to accommodate her growing belly.
We all know someone from the third group who benefits from this: lefties. The desks at Pocatello have desktops smaller than a notebook, and to make it worse they are on the right hand side. No lefty can sit comfortably and face forward in these desks. In contrast, the table-and-chair furniture in Idaho Falls accommodates lefties.
A final group of people may or may not also fit the categories listed above. This is a growing group whom we affectionately refer to as techies. No, not trekkies! Techies. These people come to class with their laptops, books, paper, and pens.
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