With the beginning of the semester comes an influx of library usage. Students flock to the library to study, research and print. In the past, the library has been open to students from 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. from Monday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Sundays. This semester, however, the hours have changed.
During this fall semester, the Edith Garland Dupré Library will only be open from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m. through 2 p.m. on Saturdays. Other days will maintain the same hours as before.
The change has come after longstanding financial issues that the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has faced. The University has faced adverse cash flow problems in past years and has not met state accounting standards according to the last three state audits.
These financial issues have been accompanied by the departure of the former president of UL Lafayette, Dr. Joseph Savoie. In addressing the financial issues, the University has brought in a new chief financial officer, Dr. Edwin Litolff.
Litolff has taken great measures to ensure that UL Lafayette and its students can continue to improve and thrive. Part of these measures included instituting a hiring freeze and cutting down hours for Dupré Library.
Students have been largely underinformed about the changes and reasoning for them. Dr. Brian Doherty, dean of Dupré Library, commented on the reason for this lack of information to the public, stating, “The unfortunate thing is that the communication with all of this is made difficult…we don’t have a mechanism to get word out to all the students.”
Doherty and staff are aware of student concerns, even sharing some of the anonymous suggestion cards regarding the new library hours that students submitted. One student suggested on Aug. 27, 2025, “Keep the library open until 11 p.m.,” and stated it would benefit, “literally everyone. Some people don’t get off work until late evening and don’t have any other place to study.”
There was a stack of these cards, all of them expressing the same displeasure with the hours. Another student specified that “us nursing students need to study.” Another student stated simply that extending the hours would be a benefit for “A+ students.”
Doherty had reviewed all of these suggestions and clarified that the library does not intend to keep the new hours as a permanent change, nor has it ever been intended to be one.
Since the decision was made, library staff have been working on ways to change the hours back and come up with a solution in the meantime. The process has simply been made more difficult by the fact that there are six positions that need to be filled within the staff.
Doherty explained that, beyond the hiring freeze, filling these positions has been uniquely hard since many of them are civil service positions, which UL Lafayette does not handle independently.
On this point, he said, “Unfortunately, if we were to get positions filled, that would take time, because all of those positions are civil service positions, and they all have different criteria that we need to meet in order to get people hired into them. The criteria sort of makes sense, but it slows things down inordinately.”
He went on to explain that the administration and staff have considered alternatives to fill positions, “We’re trying to open up all of these avenues to figure out and do some brainstorming to find a way to get the library at least back to where it was as quickly as possible, with the idea in the longer term, then dealing with it, getting us permanently back to 11 p.m.”
Further, Doherty gave some clarity on the expectations of the return of regular library hours, saying that he believes that will “definitely happen next year” as the budgeting problems will likely be less severe.
Doherty wanted to assure students that the library is working tirelessly for solutions, but there are obstacles in hiring, explaining that possible solutions, such as hiring students, fall short of solving the problems as their attendance can be fickle.
He gave the example of hiring a student who would possibly not be able to get to the library in time for opening and stated that they cannot risk situations like that.
Beyond hiring, Doherty shared an optimistic message regarding the library hours, paying a lot of credit to Litolff ’s judgment and guidance.
He also wanted to assure students that the library cares about their studies and is dedicated to providing them with the resources they need.
He said, “The world has changed so much. The way we look at it in the library is that the world has changed, but truth has not.”
Despite the challenges of the new hours and the frustration of students and staff alike, the possibilities of improvements have granted a bit of positivity, such as possibly opening the foyer to students for longer than the library’s current hours, so that students have a place to go and work.
The frustration is not solitary. Students have started petitions and there are different avenues of expressing one’s complaints, but what is most important is that they are not falling on deaf ears.