Why don’t Liberal Arts students have their own version of ‘The Cave?’

The Rutgers English Department is the largest humanities department in the School of Arts and Sciences, and yet a large portion of the English majors have to look to the underground scenes to seek out a way of meeting, bonding, and creating.

Meanwhile, the student and alumni funded “The Cave” on Busch is alive, thriving, and exciting. Located in the Hill Center, STEM students can play video games, work on projects, do mad sciences, make robots, be mentored, and meet other students just like them in the daytime hours.

But what about the liberal arts students? There is really no place for students to meet collectively and just lounge like there is on Busch. Sure, there are plenty of clubs and writing publications, but the meetings for these organizations happen in classrooms after hours, or in the underground basement slam poetry scene in New Brunswick, such as Huntington House.

Junior Kristie Petillo hopes to create a space that English and humanities majors can congregate and have uniquely for themselves. Petillo hopes to make Rutgers’ artist and slam poetry scene more accessible, more inclusive, and more effective than the current system.

Her vision for Rutgers Lost Library (The Writer’s House Lounge in Murray Hall) is to make it “a take-a-book leave-a-book, student run library. This space can be used for poetry slams, marathon readings, hanging out, literary magazine editorial staff meetings, art projects, debates, birthday parties and bat mitzvahs, pretty much anything you can fit into it.”

TheGoFundMe page for the library is at slightly over $400 of its $1,000 goal. The funds raised for the library will go straight to bookshelves, a projector for movie nights, a stereo system, and more.

If you’d like to donate, you can do so here. https://www.gofundme.com/rutgerslostlibrary

If you’d like to follow them on Facebook, you can do so here.