SUNY Poly Adopting Sleek Dark Mode on Campus
Disclaimer: At the creation of this article, SGU has been diligently working on resolving this issue. If you would like further information on this topic, please contact SGU President Tucker Mogren and/or Jennifer George.
Having been established in 1987 as the Upper Division College at Herkimer/Utica/Rome, our lovely campus has quite the history. However, one cannot hold fast to the vestiges of the past and claim to be a leader in the technology of the future. Unfortunate as it is, SUNY Polytechnic must be willing to make sacrifices if they wish to be seen as an efficacious school. How wonderful it is, then, that the campus has settled on a more modern layout: one that includes a stylish new ‘dark mode.’
In today’s world of phones, tablets, computers, laptops, TVs and movies, we are constantly looking at screens. Most websites originally adopted a typical black-text-on-white-background look, presumably to mimic the written word on paper. However, I’m sure most of us can attest that staring at a blinding white screen is painful at best, and damaging to the eyes at worst. Recently, many apps and sites have taken to offering a dark mode: the option to flip the default and, instead, have text displayed as white on a black background. No doubt easier on the eyes and less painful to read, dark mode has slowly gained popularity in recent years. Not wanting to be left out, SUNY Poly has jumped on the proverbial bandwagon and is launching their own, non-optional dark mode!
Now, instead of the blinding white lights that used to illuminate the paths at night, the campus is insisting on a more modern design: the inescapable shade of pitch black. If you’ve found yourself walking around after sunset, you would certainly have noticed the lack of any intrusive visibility, now replaced with a calming and visually appealing utter darkness. The health benefits are surely easy to see, unlike the campus. Now, without those pesky photons that your rods and cones depend on to parse the visual cues of the world around you, your fovea can now rest and relax, certain that no useful information will be revealed to you in the void between buildings.
And let’s not ignore the other benefits as well! Several seniors have said that the campus is now more interesting at night, as they must rely on their memory alone to guide themselves back to their dorms. Freshmen, on the other hand, have extolled the sense of adventure that they feel, blindly groping their way back to Oriskany across a campus of which they have not yet memorized the layout. Of course, there are maps around campus which show you a top-down view of all the buildings if you aren’t confident with your wayfinding abilities. Hopefully you have a flashlight on you to read them, as the lights above these maps have also been modernized.
Several clubs on campus have spoken out in favor of this new change. “Art Major Ursa Minor,” our resident stargazing club, have said that the removal of all light pollution on campus has increased their turnout tenfold! Most of the students we spoke to, however, claimed no knowledge of the club, only that they were using the stars to navigate themselves to Mohawk like old seafaring explorers. Also, many amateur photographers around campus have said that the new lighting standards (or lack thereof) have allowed them to venture into low-light photography. Using particular apertures and shutter speeds, these club members were able to take breathtaking photos, which they were happy to share with us. Unfortunately, we cannot report as to what exactly they looked like, because we couldn’t see anything while outside.
All in all, this seems like a step in the right direction for SUNY Poly. At least, we think it is. We can’t really see where we’re going anymore. Hopefully, our lovely campus will incorporate more modern design standards in the future, like redesigning the now out-of-date cubist rendition of a building that is Donovan Hall, or a new avant garde dormitory that can actually fit all the students it needs to. We can’t wait to see, seriously! Let us see!
