During finals week, I ran laps around floors three, four, and five of Van Pelt in search of my very own study carrel. Each time I thought I saw an open cube, I ventured closer to The Promised Land of Van Pelt real estate. But, as I would hover over my new prospective carrel, I became discouraged, as I would find:

A. A half finished cup of Starbucks with a spiral notebook open on the desk.
B. A couple of closed books about Chinese Literature in the Age of Confucius staring at me.
C. Some leftover Bui’s and a note that reads, “Be back in 15 minutes.”
D. A load of eye makeup and a few pieces of scribbled loose-leaf.
E. An individual catching some Zs on the job.
F. Nothing on the desk, but a sweater draped over the chair with a backpack on the floor.

And there’s only one way to describe these acts: Selfish.

Former Spin columnist Amruta Godbole condoned such practices in her final column of the semester. She wrote, “Leave your books with pride. You know that pre-med who occupies a desk in your favorite study area for weeks at a time, leaving just enough behind to prevent desperate studiers from obtaining a seat? We all agree that guy’s a tool. But if you can’t beat ‘em, you’ve got to join ‘em.”

But I disagree. While it is okay to leave your belongings at a study carrel for a set period of time- say forty-five minutes, around dinner time- some people leave their “stuff” to secure a place in Van Pelt overnight. This is obnoxious, rude, and should be punished.

One day during finals while I was whining about a failed trip to Van Pelt, a friend of mine explained that when he studied abroad in New Zealand his school specifically addressed people who tried to steal study carrels. Put quite simply: they were fined for each half hour they left a study carrel and prevented others from using that carrel.

Penn should actively hire guards to patrol the library for such infractions. Fines still might not discourage all Penn students from needlessly wasting study space, but punishment would likely curb the problem significantly. Such a program would be easy to implement as one guard could likely patrol the whole library. The guard could use equipment similar to that of the Philadelphia Parking Authority to efficiently monitor Van Pelt.

The ability to reserve study carrels in advance (similar to the way group study rooms are reserved) would also alleviate this problem.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 at 5:19 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.