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The library is bustling, full of people while the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafts through the air. The noise never seems to stop in there, right?

The library is silent, never seems to have anyone in there and the mustiness of old books is pungent. It’s a nice refuge, right?

On the first floor, the former is true; there never seems to be a moment of peace. However, if you venture up to the third floor, the latter is true (yes, there’s a third floor). You wouldn’t imagine that 27,000 students attend UWM by how quiet and nearly desolate it is.

Whether you’re grabbing a quick brew at the Grind or getting a cup of quiet with your studies, the Golda Meir Library has both covered.

The atmosphere at The School of Architecture and Urban Planning from 2pm-3pm remained still, as students were in class, preparing for the most stressful time of the semester, critiques. I decided to head back into the action after sunset, around 9pm.

“Aside from the twelve hours we spend in class throughout the week, we dedicate around 24-30 hours outside of class, in the studio,” Jackson Richard, senior, said.

Students flooded the building with coffee in one hand and a bag full of tools in the other. Installations and sketches of a project on designing a residence hall at UWM covered the tables as creatively-driven students remained focused on their computer, crafting a brilliant future.

On a scarce warm Thursday in October the sun made 54 degrees feel like 70. Lamar, a campus police officer stood out to me. His shoulders were broad and his eyes were on alert.

“I’ve worked here for 16 years,” he told me. After sharing a little about his day and some of his struggles he turns it right back around, saying that being a police officer isn’t for everyone, “But I look at them like I’m their big brother.”

He recalls graduation and taking pictures with student’s families. The pay-off to the job, he boasts, is seeing those same students walk across the stage who struggled every day between classes.

Lamar is one of those guys some only notice when they need him but in others he has a lasting impact.

As midterms approach, I face Janet while she sits with a cool refreshing beer in her hand. The conversations of students at the Gasthaus are inaudible, but it was still too loud for us to hear one another without raising our voices. With stress being piled on, I ask her as I fixate my eyes at the beer about why she was drinking. “Cause drinking a beer is nice and it helps you relax.” I go on to ask if it was because of stress? “Yes, partially. It’s hard to focus. I have to go to work..I have classes,” she says. She continues about balancing life as we sit in the dimly-lit restaurant, the voices of stressed students drown us out.

Upon entering the Roberto Hernandez Center, nestled in the narrow Bolton hallway that leads many UWM students toward the library, you’re treated to a colorful collage made up the flags of many Latin American countries.

On the surface, the center is an advising office for the university’s around 2,000 students of Latin American heritage. If you were to see the space as strictly an academic advising office, you wouldn’t be doing the center justice.

From the office’s director Alberto Maldonado, to the two advisors Gabriela Dorantes and Olivia Navarro, to the many different students who frequent the office on a daily basis, the center is a place for advice, shared experience, and in the words of UWM senior Leonardo Serrato, a “second family”.

“They’re there for you,” Serrato said. “It feels like you are welcome to ask questions, even personal ones.”

He’s got an unmistakable, toothy grin – the kind of smirk that’s crooked and slightly unintimidating, although his sharpened canine teeth might suggest otherwise. His body, smooth as marble, glistens in the bracing fall daylight. The wind blows across the idle campus.

I glance up at him, because even in a crouch he towers a staggering six feet tall, and mutter a question into his cold ear: “How do you feel about UWM?”

He doesn’t answer but instead adamantly beams forward, watching the students schlep across campus.

Occasionally a car or bus will zip past. He seems unfazed. I sigh.

That’s what you get when you try to have a word with Pounce – our resident guardian, mascot, eyesore – the panther statue plopped out in front of UWM’s Enderis Hall.

Behind the glass doors of the EMS Senior Design Lab, mechanical engineering students Sydney Nerad and Tucker Stone sit side by side plugging calculations into CREO, a 3D printer designing prototype software. The pair is designing a testing fixture, an assignment given to them by GE Healthcare for their senior design project.

“MRI’s need to be cleaned with chemicals after each use, deteriorating the material that could change an X-Ray,” Nerad explains.

“We are creating a machine to regulate flow rate of chemical testing fixtures for more accurate MRIs.” Stone concludes.

When the team is finished, GE will 3D print their design and create prototypes for testing. If the design turns out to be a success, GE will manufacture their creation.

The smell of sweat and chlorine haunts the air in what seems like a never ending maze of hallways and gymnasiums. Each doorway leads you into a new realm of the building where you might find a weight room or a racquetball court. The echo of dribbling basketballs is faint in the distance behind the commotion of students constantly coming in and out of the building for class or to get a workout in. In the hour I was there, I saw the UWM Men’s Basketball team practicing, a women’s swim team practice and about 50 people in the weight room, and that only covered a quarter of the building. As busy as it is, the Klotsche Center offers endless opportunity and entertainment for those interested in being physically active.

The view from the 1970’s-resemblent couches in the Sandburg Residence Hall lobby is one that can’t be matched. Unfortunately, unlike a luxurious getaway, there’s no white sand beach outside the window. Instead, you’re placed smack dab in the center of the day of the college student who’s craving that first plane to Aruba.

Five minutes after the hour, a few students are nearly sprinting through the white-tiled, white-walled lobby and out the gray doors. Their destination is obvious – class that began several minutes ago. Five minutes before the next hour, students are flooding the lobby. They impatiently wait in line, ID cards locked and loaded in their hands, itching to be the closest they can get to a getaway – their room.

The first in a three-part series on DiverCity Walking out of the Harry and Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, the last thing you expect to see is a monument to your right, perched atop a small hill. Drawing from many Jewish symbols, such as the menorah and six pillars of Judaism, the monument is […]

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UW-Milwaukee student Amanda Dahms was a voluntary Marine Corps service member who enlisted when she was 17-years-old. She went to boot camp the following day after her high school graduation in 2006. After finishing boot camp, she went to the school house and then to the fleet. Dahms said that she was a survivor of […]