Portraits of the Plaza

Aisha Marshall, 18, is a sophomore at Eastern, studying pre-med. She says that while the Plaza is OK, “I don’t really like staying here very much at all. I try to leave as soon as I can.” Marshall and her 21-year-old boyfriend, Ian Lovering, are waiting for buses to take them to school. Lovering is in his first year at SFCC. For him, the Plaza could be a little more homey. “There’s no place to really relax and feel just away from stuff and study while you wait for a bus, that kind of thing,” Lovering says. The pair take the bus every day to get to and from school. At the top of their list of possible Plaza improvements is cleanliness; Marshall laments the state of the building’s bathrooms. “I actually really wish they had hand sanitizer — that’s, like, one of my main complaints,” she says. “I asked them about it, but they said that they’re not doing it because people started stealing them.”