The Culp Center was once a place for students to go and relax between classes.
They could take a nap in a dimly lit corner. They could go to the Cave or other lounge area and drink their morning coffee before their eyes were ready to surrender to the harsh light of day.
Now, the Culp Center and other campus buildings are getting a nearly $3 million lighting and plumbing update, which Tony Warner, assistant vice president of student affairs said will make the Culp Center 200 percent brighter.
That doesn’t sound good for the eyes.
The Culp Center now has the feeling of walking into a giant tanning bed. There is so much fluorescent and weird blue light, you almost need those little goggles you get to shield your eyes from the tanning bed rays.
Some areas of the Culp Center were too dim before the installation of new lighting fixtures, so it is understandable to replace and add fixtures to provide safety.
If the other outdated fixtures could have been replaced, without adding the seemingly several hundred extra fixtures, wouldn’t the Culp Center have been bright enough in most areas, and would have saved even more in electricity, which was the reason for updating the lighting in the first place?
Offices that are 8-foot-square, where people are trying to work on computers, don’t need three full-size fluorescent light fixtures in them. Computer monitor brightness settings can only be adjusted so far.
The mood in the Culp Center is completely different now.
It is not set apart now as the relaxing student center that is was designed to be in the early ’70s.
Now it is the super-hospital-bright, florescent-glowing, weirdly shaped cube of a building that we have to go into because it holds important offices, the largest campus computer lab, the post office, the major campus food supply, and a few entertainment and time-passing opportunities.
Once the updates are complete, we will have the mostly un-“cave”-like Cave in the country, and quite possibly the world.
Officials have said that we will get adjusted to the lighting changes quickly – probably because our retinas will burn out.

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