Library Liberty

(The Crimson invites all men in the University to submit signed communications of timely interest. It assumes no responsibility, however for sentiments expressed under this head and reserves the right to exclude any whose publication would be palpably inappropriate.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Your editorial of this morning on the relation of Text Books to Jelly and the one several weeks ago concerning private appropriation of library books must express the sentiment of that vast group of college students who love books because books can be friends. But you ought to notice editorially that smaller groups of college students who entertain no such love, cherish no such fondness, for the sanctum of books. In the endeavor to please that smaller group, I suggest the following:

1. Abolish Silence Signs. The raucous voiced wits who disgorge their night's adventures across the broad tables should not be subjected even to a moral injunction to whisper. To accommodate them further, we might even make the tables narrower, so that such conversationalists and controversialists may not be inconvenienced by bending over in each other's direction too far.

2. Build a Rostrum in the Main Reading Room. This would make it possible for those silly serious students who want to study to carry on. If there is sufficient noise in the library, as would be guaranteed by the rostrum and the rustic, it will not be difficult to study. What confuses the afore-mentioned silly serious student is the low, threatening rumble of the aforesaid raucous voiced wits.

3. Provide Clod-Shoes at the Entrance. Some students derive such subtle pleasure from hearing the reading hall resound with the click-click of their hob-nails on the marble edgings that we ought not to enjoin them to walk softly, but, rather, we ought to furnish them with clod-hoppers, the more to indulge that subtle pleasure.

4. Provide Artists' Outfits at the Desk. We appreciate the struggling efforts of our Cesares and Colliers and Bud Fishers on the margins of pages and on fly leaves, but it grieves us to see their efforts so "cabin'd, cribb'd, confined". Why shouldn't we furnish such incipient cartoonists with regular drawing books, in the interest of art and freedom?

5. Offer Prizes for the Best Cough and the Loudest Handkerchief Operations. The main reading room and Lower Widener are practically the best sort of proving grounds for those coughs which are above normal strength. In those rooms, everyone else tries to be quiet. That is the psychological moment to test out a rippling, rolling, resounding cough or a crackling, recalcitrant nose.

I know, my dear Mr. Editor, that there will be those among the silly serious students who will think my program unduly generous. But, I ask, what avail the compunctions and decorum of five hundred students if a small but determined minority hold the balance between quiet and confusion in their power? There will be these, too, who say this is an attack upon personal liberty. I for one, stand for the autocracy of decorum. --HARRY REIFF '25. November 10, 1922.