Student petition against library overhaul sees rapid growth as leaders call for ‘patience,’ participation

Within just two weeks, a student petition to “Save the Mikkelsen Library” garnered over 1,300 signatures, sparking fears of a “two-thirds” reduction in space. Peter Folliard, chair of the library task force, called those claims “highly inaccurate.”

Folliard, who serves as vice president for innovation, emphasized the task force is designing a “roadmap” rather than debating any real plans. The group had met just once — at 8 a.m. on Nov. 5 — before the petition went live midday on Nov. 6.

“I appreciate the democratic initiative of a petition and strong interest, but it's not grounded in what the facts are,” Folliard said. “There is no plan besides the enterprise goal, which is a plan to plan.”

The wave of campus skepticism about the library’s future has created a tense starting point, putting pressure on the task force to proceed carefully and transparently.

Junior Lydia Valenzuela-Rylaarsdam, who created the petition, said it was born out of frustration she saw on social media and in private conversations. She acknowledged that she did not contact the task-force leadership to verify any specific claims before publishing.

“I wish there had been a space for students to share their collective frustration,” Valenzuela-Rylaarsdam said. “I just wanted something more formal that students could share with other Augie community members.”

Despite criticism about the petition’s accuracy, she expressed no regrets about her approach.

“I would do it again,” she said.

Student liaisons on the task force say that even if the petition’s specific claims were inaccurate, the sentiment behind it was valid.

“I don’t really blame people for hearing a bit of information and kind of running with it,” senior Chilotam Okafor said, one of two newly appointed student liaisons on the task force. She cited the Commons renovation and the replacement of the Huddle with Chick-fil-A as reasons students are skeptical of reimagining campus spaces, noting that similar changes in the past were met with opposition.

Regardless, Okafor believes the petition did play an important role.

“It helps us to show that everybody really does care about the library,” Okafor said.

President Stephanie Herseth Sandlin addressed the current controversy in a Nov. 7 email to the campus community, writing that the “enterprise goal is intended to preserve and enhance that environment, not diminish it.”

Enterprise goals break the ‘Viking Bold’ plan into yearly objectives, addressing immediate challenges and tracking progress toward long-term milestones.

One specific goal for this year is to “develop a plan and budget to reimagine Mikkelsen Library as an integrated service hub for student learning, information, innovation and technology.”

The Mikkelsen Library task force includes Folliard; library director Ronelle Thompson; access services librarian Krista Ohrtman; faculty members Scott Schmidt and David Golemboski; staff from Information Technology, Accessibility Services and Facilities; and student liaisons junior Abigail Smith and Okafor.

Thompson, who has served as library director since 1983, said her staff is always reimagining services to meet student needs but remains committed to the building’s core purpose.

“The library is first and foremost a student space,” Thompson said in an email. “We hope this process will focus on providing Augie students with enhanced and redesigned spaces to meet their needs now and in the future.”

To combat rumors about how the task force is approaching its goal, Folliard created a public dashboard: a Google Site with everything from meeting minutes to student seating heat maps to a 463-page report on 21st-century libraries.

Folliard said the dashboard is intended to model “total transparency,” yet the site also includes AI-generated concept images of potential future spaces, which have drawn criticism from the student representatives.

Okafor described the AI aesthetic as “Millennial Gray” and “hostile,” while Smith called it “sterilized.”

Smith said that she and Okafor have voiced these concerns to the committee.

“We said students don’t like that 21st-century futuristic, you know, modernization,” Smith said. “We're not about that — like, the 90s are coming back.”

The task force’s use of AI extends beyond concept images. Folliard uses AI to generate meeting notes, describing it as an "executive assistant" that summarizes information without making decisions. But Smith seeks out human-written notes, finding them more specific.

She attributes the heavy use of AI to the task force’s compressed timeline. The group aims to finalize recommendations to the board of trustees by April 2026, a deadline Smith described as “unrealistic” and “very rushed.”

“I feel backed into a corner to use [AI] basically, like being compelled to use it in that way because of a tight timeline,” Smith said. “I’d want to be exposed to and know more about that process where AI isn’t involved just for my own knowledge of what goes into it.”

Folliard acknowledged the pressure and the demands of thorough planning.

“I think there’s some real sense of, ‘Hey, if this is really important, you can’t rush it.’ I agree with that, and at the same time, it’s like, well, let’s do the best that we can within this time frame,” he said. “And if we find ourselves in February we haven’t even gotten very far, then that’s another conversation.”

He noted that task-force members have full-time jobs on top of this work. He encouraged students to fill out upcoming surveys and to attend listening sessions, asking for time to allow the planning process to unfold.

“Just a little patience would be great,” Folliard said. “And then, if they’re unhappy, go for my head. Come at me. Write a petition for my dismissal, but for right now, let us go through the process.”

For Smith, the goal remains ensuring student voices aren’t lost in the process. She said the group is collaborating with faculty experts to create questions to survey the student body.

“Please fill out our surveys. It’s so important,” Smith said. “Your voices are being heard. I promise.”

Smith’s request reflects an important question: whether a task force operating under a tight deadline can genuinely incorporate student voices or whether major decisions will be made without meaningful student input. The coming months will test if the task force’s efforts will be able to bridge that gap.