SFC, Once Known as the 24-Hour Campus | Hideyuki Nakamine, Administrative Director, Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC)

Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) (hereinafter referred to as "SFC") was established in April 1990 in conjunction with the establishment of two new faculties: the Faculty of Policy Management and the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies. Its initiatives have attracted broad attention from both inside and outside the university, including the introduction of Admissions Office (AO) entrance examinations from the first year—ahead of other domestic universities—the development of interdisciplinary education that transcends the framework of humanities and sciences, and the promotion of education and research utilizing the internet. Furthermore, it was common for students to stay on campus until late at night to work on research and assignments, leading to the birth of the term "nighttime residency" (hereinafter referred to as "residency"). It can be said that SFC played a pioneering role in the concept of the "24-hour campus."

Conceptually, the "24-hour campus" is not merely a matter of time, but starts from the idea that "the entire campus is an atelier for intellectual creation." In this article, I would like to look back on the transition of "SFC, once known as the 24-hour campus," and share the current state of the campus.

The system that supports the foundation of the "24-hour campus" is known as "residency." "Residency" is a system that allows students to stay on campus from 11:00 PM to 8:00 AM the following morning, limited to curricular activities permitted by the faculty member in charge and only for those who have applied in advance (*Residency for extracurricular activities such as studying for tests, club activities, or job hunting is not permitted at all. Locations are limited to classrooms and joint/individual research labs accessible only to students with faculty permission). At SFC, there are many project activities utilizing computers and the internet, and since the campus opened, focus has been placed on developing the information environment, such as introducing many state-of-the-art workstations. Against this background, the university has responded to students' needs to fully utilize the campus as a "24-hour campus" through the "residency" system.

Please refer to [Table 1] for a list of the attributes of "residency" applicants for the 2024 academic year. Additionally, [Photo 1] shows the application screen for "residency." Students wishing to stay overnight must use this form to apply in advance by 8:00 PM on the day of residency.

I became the Academic Affairs Section Manager at SFC in June 2011 and spent four years and five months at SFC until October 2015. The sights I saw daily during that time are still burned into my memory ten years later. Specifically, it was the sight of numerous sleeping bags hanging to dry from the railings of the second-floor landings of each classroom building. This was a common sight on campus throughout the year, and there is no doubt that this was the ultimate symbol of the "24-hour campus."

On the other hand, there is a great misconception among people from other universities regarding the library's opening hours. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit another university and see its library. I remember being very surprised to hear that their library was open 24 hours. When I mentioned this to the guide, I received an unexpected response: "What are you talking about? We were just following SFC's lead." While I knew that the SFC library was not open 24 hours at the time of my visit, I lacked knowledge of its history and assumed it must have been open 24 hours in the past, ending the conversation there. After returning to campus, I did not look into it further, and it eventually faded from my memory. Writing this article provided a starting point to trace the history of the library's opening hours back to the campus's founding. What I discovered was the fact that the SFC library has never been open for regular 24-hour service since the campus opened. The initial closing time was 10:00 PM, and while there was a period when it was extended to 11:00 PM, it has never been open 24 hours for regular use. (*The closing time changed to 11:00 PM from the 1993 academic year, and since the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been 10:00 PM. However, in the 2019 academic year, a trial was conducted to open the area on the first floor called the "Open Area" at night during July and January. The trial ended because the number of users was lower than expected and the pandemic followed the next year.)

So, why did staff from other universities misunderstand that the SFC library was open 24 hours? This actually involves circumstances including the name of the library organization at Keio University. At Keio University, libraries are called Media Centers. This is related to the fact that Keio was the first Japanese university to transform traditional libraries into a format suitable for the information age. At SFC, in the middle of the campus—the very center, so to speak—there is a building called Building M (Mu), where the Media Center was established in the second year of the campus [Photo 2]. Based on that concept, the Media Center also served as what we now call the IT management department. Currently, the Keio Information Technology Centers (KIC) is located in Building M. In the second year of the campus, 72 SONY NEWS 1520 workstations were installed here, and from the 1996 academic year, it was named the "New Open Area" and opened for 24-hour student use. In other words, the legend that the SFC library was open 24 hours was likely a misunderstanding; it was not the library where books can be browsed, but the "New Open Area" managed by the IT department—part of the Media Center organization in the same Building M—that was available 24 hours. Currently, the office of the Keio Information Technology Centers (KIC) is located in that spot in Building M, and there are no special classrooms available for students, so even the basis for that legend has been lost.

While the library was not open 24 hours, SFC began a new initiative called the "Miraisozojuku (Institute for Designing the Future) Project" in the 2007 academic year. This involved the development of residential education and research facilities where students, faculty, and individuals from both within Keio and outside, as well as from Japan and abroad, could stay and live together while practicing one of Keio University's educational philosophies, "learning while teaching, teaching while learning." While facing various changes in social conditions since its conception and being forced to reconsider and change plans, the "SBC (Student Built Campus)" was launched in 2015 by students, faculty, staff, and alumni. With students and faculty at the center, they worked on creating a new campus under the concept of "creating the campus of the future ourselves." In the 2020 academic year, a residential education and research facility called "β (Beta) Village," consisting of seven buildings, was completed [Photo 3]. Since then, courses such as "Introduction to SBC" and "SBC Practice" have been held at β Village, and residential education and research practices such as research group retreats and Special Research Projects (intensive courses held during school holidays) have been conducted.

β Village

Η Village

Separately from "β Village," a student dormitory called "Η (Eta) Village" with a capacity of 300 people was newly established adjacent to the campus in March 2023 [Photo 4]. The dormitory, with the slogan "Let's Live on Campus," consists of four residential buildings and one common building, where breakfast and dinner are provided from Monday to Sunday in the cafeteria located within the common building. With the completion of this student dormitory, the "Miraisozojuku (Institute for Designing the Future) Project," which had been underway since the 2007 academic year, reached a milestone. At "Η Village," active events are held every month in accordance with the SFC tradition of students creating things themselves. While it is an unparalleled facility for students who wish to study in an environment close to campus, it is also true that as long as they live in this dormitory, the significance of "residency" on campus has further diminished. It can be said that this has provided a point of change for the nature of the "24-hour campus" itself.

While SFC has begun exploring new ways of being a "24-hour campus" through "β Village" and "Η Village," I must report that the overall appearance of the campus has changed completely recently. Since April 2022, I have been spending my days on campus for the second time as the Administrative Director of Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC). When I first took office, we were in the midst of the pandemic, operations were centered on online classes, and the number of students coming to campus was limited. However, on May 8, 2023, the classification of COVID-19 under the Infectious Diseases Control Law was changed, and the campus quickly returned to being centered on in-person classes. As of May 2025, when I am writing this article, most classes have returned to an in-person format, and the campus has basically returned to the sight I saw ten years ago as the Academic Affairs Section Manager. However, one thing has completely changed from ten years ago: the existence of sleeping bags, which were the symbol of the "24-hour campus." As mentioned earlier, the sight of many sleeping bags hanging to dry was a daily occurrence on campus ten years ago. Now, however, no matter which building on campus you visit, you no longer see sleeping bags hanging. [Table 2] compares the number of "residency" applicants by month between the 2006 academic year, the oldest available record, and the latest 2024 academic year. Although nearly 20 years have passed between the two, you can see that the number of applicants in 2024 has plummeted to about one-eighth of that in 2006. Transitions on campus during this period include the conversion of classrooms called "Special Classrooms," which housed many Windows and Macintosh computers, into ordinary classrooms. Recently, the performance of computers themselves has improved dramatically, and personal laptops can now sufficiently handle a fair amount of processing. Additionally, by using VPN services, it has become possible to directly access the university's network environment from off-campus. I believe these factors have significantly reduced the necessity of staying for "residency" on campus. Furthermore, the major changes in human relationships and behavioral patterns caused by the pandemic can also be cited as a reason. Modern students tend to place more importance on health and quality of life, and I believe they are increasingly avoiding staying late on campus to work. The increasing tendency to emphasize the "individual" may also be a factor.

As described above, the culture of SFC in a sense—the "24-hour campus" symbolized by sleeping bags—is becoming a thing of the past. As we have seen, this is due to progress in computer technology and changes in student behavioral patterns. Under these circumstances, I believe the next thing we as faculty and staff must do is look toward the new environment in which the campus is placed and prepare for the construction of a next-generation learning environment that will follow the "24-hour campus." And I believe that is the answer to the destiny SFC was born with as an "Experimental Campus."

This article is quoted from the University Bulletin No. 423 (published July 2025).
University Bulletin No. 423