By Hana Sakurai Wernham, Second Year, English
The witching hour is upon us: the assessment period. Human desperation (unnatural nocturnal habits, stress-grinding your teeth, caffeine) converge with technological evils (having too many tabs open, email-to-print not working, autosave turning itself off) to penetrate our libraries and workspaces with the most heinous of vibes. To the cause of the ailing student, I am most sympathetic. But standards of public conduct are slipping. I have to cut to the chase: it is never okay to have your bare feet out in the ASS. O that we transform ourselves into beasts!
If you can bare to look at a screen for a few minutes longer today, I implore you to read my list of unacceptable library behaviours and evaluate. If you are guilty of any of these behaviours, know that I have found it in my heart to forgive you but also that I am going to go on library search and reserve for myself all the books you need for your diss.
1. Having your bare feet out
Allow me to expand on the issue I outlined earlier. In our civilised society, bolstered by institutions of progress such as the railroads and Deliveroo, I did not think such a prohibition would have to be so explicitly stated: do not get your bare feet out in the library. Slipping your shoes off under the desk puts you on thin ice. But to expose the dogs is an (unprotected) step too far.
‘If you didn’t book the seat, it’s not yours – them’s the rules. But the law does not mitigate the awkwardness of the act of eviction itself’
Only recently I was in the ASS sat next to a girl in slides (a far too permissive choice of shoe) who got her feet out and crossed her legs on her chair, so her feet sat in my periphery. Her wiggling toes commanded my gaze and to make matters worse she would occasionally pick dead skin off her heel. It was like a gory car crash – I couldn’t look away. Is ‘distracted by bare feet in the library’ a valid reason to fill out an exceptional circumstances form?
2. Hogging a seat
The politics here are complicated. I don’t claim to be a diplomat of seat-booking relations. Kicking someone out of their seat because you’ve booked it is a bit of a moral grey area. If you didn’t book the seat, it’s not yours – them’s the rules. But the law does not mitigate the awkwardness of the act of eviction itself: ‘Um, sorry, I think I booked this seat’, you stage-whisper, feigning forgiving uncertainty (‘I think’) even though you checked your seat reservation ten times on the way in. Now you, bureaucratic tyrant, must watch your ignorant victim struggle to pack up their strewn belongings.
Hana Sakurai Wernham
While booking gives you the (albeit fraught) right of eviction, it does not make it okay to leave your belongings at your seat for over an hour. If you could walk to Ashton court in the time you’ve taken away from your desk (where you’ve left only a hairband to indicate it’s still ‘taken’) then you have forfeited rights to your seat. Don’t be annoyed when you come back and someone has deposed your hoodie and empty meal deal pasta pot. These objects have no authority here. If you want to ‘reserve’ your seat for an unacceptable amount of time, full send it and use your MacBook as a placeholder…!
Oh, and don’t try and sell your booked seat on Snapchat…
3. Doing snus
A pack of Velo seems to have joined the student’s inventory alongside the more orthodoxlaptop, notebook and pencil case. I don’t want to chastise the nicotine addicts among us – you already mark yourselves out from the rest because of the circular outline that has burned itself into the pocket of your jeans. But digging around your gums to fish out the used pouch then immediately touching your keyboard with dribbly fingers will make me question your integrity.
4. Foreplay
Going to the library with your amour is, on paper, an inoffensive idea. But making fellow students your unwilling voyeurs in the process is categorically not okay. By all means, motivate your girlfriend to finish her essay with some kind words of encouragement. But don’t embellish your words with unnecessary shoulder rubbing or god forbid a neck kiss from behind. Whispering is uncomfortably erotic enough as it is – don’t make it worse!
If you were truly locked in, you’d commit to asceticism like the rest of us. Renounce sensual gratification. There is only Microsoft Word and Blackboard now.
Maya Tailor
Staying on our best behaviour is in our best interests. We must do what we can to make the environment of our intellectual degradation (that’s what deadline season feels like, at least) more cooperative and pleasant. Heed my warnings! Or I will arm the library staff with water-filled spray bottles and have them spray miscreants like misbehaving cats. Bad student! Down!
Featured image: Epigram / Hanno Sie
