It's that time of year again. Suited-up juniors are converging on Page Auditorium, on their way to summer internship interviews with new Duke portfolios and packs of spearmint Orbit in hand.

As the Class of 2010 is quickly discovering, the Career Center is not a glamorous place. Interview rooms are mostly cramped and windowless. The ground-floor office resembles a dentist's waiting room. But the Career Center's location, near the Chapel at the heart of West Campus, makes up for these shortcomings.

Students can schedule interviews between their class periods, and still make the walk to or from Rubenstein Hall or the French Family Science Center in five minutes. Recruiters who emerge from an interview cave after an eight-hour shift are rewarded with a view of the Chapel bathed in afternoon light. The central location also encourages students to drop by when they need quick resume or job-search advice, but aren't yet ready to meet with a career counselor.

Despite all the advantages of its Page location, the University has announced that the Career Center-and student interview space-will move to a new suite in the Smith Warehouse. This relocation is misguided, and will both greatly inconvenience students during the interview process and hamper the Career Center's ability to attract undergraduates to its services.

Although Smith Warehouse is the perfect new home for the Office of the University Registrar and the Bursar's Office-both of which students rarely visit, and previously were housed in an even less-convenient Broad Street office building-it is inappropriate for the Career Center.

Aside from Coal Pile Drive, Smith Warehouse may be the worst place on campus to interview for a job. Most students get to Smith by taking a bus and hopping off on Campus Drive, or by walking under the graffiti-covered bridge next to East Campus. Either way, the trip involves walking up a dingy side street and climbing a wooden staircase, and then crossing the 1,000-foot-long parking lot until you find your entrance to the building. Unless you have a car, it's not a place you want to go in a suit.

During interview season, many students find they have multiple interviews in the same day and open slots are limited. Convenience is at a premium. Holding interviews on Duke's answer to Siberia will make the process miserable for some students; no one who has rushed to Smith Warehouse from a lecture in Hudson Hall is in the right mindset for a case interview.

If more space is needed on Main West, it would do better to evict the Office of Judicial Affairs from the West Union Building or the Office of Student Activities and Facilities from its huge Bryan Center space. Only some students visit these departments, and neither need a convenient location as much-or arguably, serve as an important role-as the Career Center. If the Career Center staff want spacious offices with convenient parking, then the Center's back office functions only should move to Smith Warehouse. Counselors should still meet with students, conduct open advising hours and organize on-campus recruitment on West Campus.

The job search is hard enough these days. Searching for the Career Center itself should not be the most challenging step.