Should the library be open longer than 12 AM?

So some SGA Senators have been discussing the current operating hours of the AOK Library. UMBC seriously lacks a study place where students can study, what is considered, "after hours." Although the atrium is open 24/7, the library closes at 12 on school nights and earlier over the weekends except Sunday. Personally, I've always found the atrium space not big enough for all the students that head down there once the semester really starts back up. There aren't enough tables, and there surely don't seem to be enough outlets. Compared to our peer institutions as well, like U of Alabama or U of Arkansas and others, our library closes down 2-3 hours earlier every school night.

In an attempt to understand the situation better, we contacted Larry Wilt, Director of the Library and spoke to him about this issue. We talked about possibly only having one or two floors of the library open for an extended period of time - 2 to 3 hours every night. While the library understood the need to extend hours, he told us that the current budget could not possibly support such a venture. With this economy and the budget cuts, finding money to fund another 2 hours of running the library becomes much harder as well. According to Larry Wilt, Director fo the AOK library, research was done in 2003 to come up with estimated costs of extending the library hours by 2 hours every night of the week. For Fiscal Year 2003, costs came up to about $35,000. We can add inflation costs to that and come up with a rough idea for costs for now.

So here is our question:

1. Would longer library hours help us? Would you want to see the AOK library hours extended?