A student with his pants around his ankles walks into the room, his music blaring loudly as you hear the thum-thum-thum of a rap beat emitting from his oversized headphones. Another student, with a mocha-double-caramel iced latte in hand, walks in and loudly tells her friend next to her about how horrible her class is. A group of students then walk in, sit down at a table, and talk about how the Jets are, unsurprisingly, playing like the Jets.
If you think this is a common room or commuter lounge (and let’s face it: this situation could never happen in a commuter lounge because no one talks or has fun in them), think again. The situation above occurs at almost every library within the Melville Library.
If you are surprised about this revelation, then you have never been to the North Reading Room, the Central Reading Room, or the Music Library within the Melville Library.
But if you have tried to study in one of the libraries mentioned above, then you know exactly what I am talking about; when you are trying to study for that soul-crushing midterm, you can never seem to find a safe haven to study. All you constantly hear is the sound of multiple people talking about a bunch of topics you could more or less not care about.
However, this does not mean that this should be allowed to happen. A library is a place to study, not socialize and give 1,001 reasons why the Jets suck or why Eli Manning looks like he is in a perpetual state of confusion.
Have some decency for your peers around you; everyone is in the library for a specific reason, and though it may now seem like it is to socialize, the real reason why we are all there is so that we can hopefully find a quiet place to study, not hear you gripe and moan about all of your problems. There are other people that can listen, and I am pretty sure almost everyone studying for their Bio 203 midterm could really not care less.
On top of this, maybe the people who are working at the library should be allowed to kick these people out. They do nothing but cause problems, so why let them stay? Maybe we should bring in some Catholic Nuns with some meter sticks and let them go old school on anyone that tries to commence a conversation within the library.
And this is not just a problem within the libraries, but also within the large lecture halls as well. I still vividly remember how some girl in the big Chemistry 132 lecture felt it was her obligation to let everyone around her know about her train ride to Babylon the previous weekend, which was not only annoying but extremely rude as well. While trying to listen to an already hard-to-hear Professor Hanson, I heard the word “like” and “Babylon” every two to three seconds, which took away from the whole learning experience.
So everyone, please keep your thoughts to yourself when you are in the library or in a lecture hall. Save those conversations for when you are sitting on the Staller Steps or walking down the Academic Mall, and please, for the love of Wolfie, have some common decency for your fellow students actually trying to study and learn.
