I do not like changes. I will be the first person to admit it. I have certain traditions I need to do at the beginning of each and every semester before I’m really able to settle back into school. Like accidentally driving the wrong direction down one-way streets in a futile attempt to reach Main Street. Or falling down the steps from Olin to the campus center and spilling coffee all over myself. And, of course, being briefly disenrolled for forgetting to list my phone number on my student portfolio.
I’d be lost without these traditions. They’re inherent to who I am at Wesleyan. But if there’s anything I feel more attached to than my first week routine, it’s the Wesleyan campus itself. I remember driving to Wesleyan the day I got my acceptance letter and watching the sun set from Foss Hill. That was the day I knew I wanted to come here. It’s been three years since then and I’ve learned all the shortcuts and tricks of walking around campus. I can tell you what color every tree’s leaves turn in the fall. I know where the Babar guy lives. I’ve spent hours in the Butt tunnels and come back a changed man, unable to speak of the horrors I’ve seen. I even discovered a secret passageway in my house this year. I’m very much attached to this place. Wesleyan doesn’t always feel like home to me, and it is not always kind to me. But it’s my lighthouse. I would be lost without it.
As such, I don’t like to see it messed with. First they changed Fauver Field into dorms. I was somewhat okay with this one. Granted, the field was beautiful and there were a lot of nice trees that got cut down. But whenever I saw Fauver Field, I always thought about the time I tried to cut across the field on my way to class the winter of my freshman year and tripped on a patch of ice while carrying, for reasons that baffle me to this very day, a plastic container of won-ton soup. Sufficed to say, I had to sit through an entire class with a fat lip while smelling like a greasy Chinese restaurant. There are some things about Wesleyan I would like to forget. What happened to me that one day on Fauver Field is one of them. Let us never speak of this moment again.
The next thing that happened was that they dug up Andrus Field. This bothered me a little. Granted, everyone has that one day they’d like to forget where they find themselves dead drunk while wearing a sombrero on Andrus Field at 2:30 some weekday afternoon and eventually pass out while hugging their friend’s leg. That’s a given, and hopefully nothing to be too ashamed about. The real concern here is graduation. I have my commencement ceremony on that field. Facing the reality of imminent responsibility will be hard enough. Facing the reality of imminent responsibility while staring at the ruins of that building I never went into and the foundation for a building I will probably never go into seems to be too apt a metaphor for my liking. But on the other hand, at least I’m going to get to have commencement on Andrus Field when it’s still a field and not the front door to the freshman cafeteria. Because no one wants to graduate in front of MoCon. Suck it ’09.
But the real indignity of this five-year plan the University has is what they’ve done to the library. The library is more than just a building. It’s more than just a repository for books and nostalgia. It becomes like a second womb to you after a while. Only this time, your mother’s uterus is equipped with high ceilings, chandeliers, wood paneling, and you’re allowed to bring candy in with you. It’s just one of those things. The library ought never to be touched. But when I went to the library for the first time this year, what did I find? They call them information commons. I call them cubicles. Cubicles with dividing walls. The beauty of the first floor was always that it was wide open. You could carry on conversations with people on the other end of the library once you learned the right gestures. On a clear day, a man could see forever. No longer. And if I read the poster in front of these information commons correctly, this is only the beginning. Soon, change will spread beyond the reference desk. It may come to Smith Reading Room. It may come to the second floor where there’s that skylight. It may even come to that dark area of shelves on the 3rd floor where everyone dreams of eventually having sex. It’s coming. Is this a call to arms? Hard to say. But something has to be done. If not for us, then for the big armchairs by the window.
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