In Search of Space

By H.E. Whitney

In Search of Space: Individual Claims of Public Space and Property in the University Library.
November 15, 2009

So I begin this short essay from the standpoint of a lowly staff assistant at a university library. The perks of the job are few but when I am free, I do manage to scour the internet for minutiae such as the latest football standings, the most recent Paul Krugman article, the newest row concerning Glen Beck’s antics, insect studies, or innovations in waste disposal. Occasionally I will peruse alternative media such as the Boston Phoenix or Alternet or high brow cultural magazines and journals such as The Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker, or the Journal of Postmodern Culture. Outside of these moments I lend study room keys to students, remove paper jams from the library printers, troubleshoot computer software problems, or help students research their papers. It is a thankless job, but since I am a graduate student, the librarians who hired me now have comfortable respites from these otherwise rote aspects of working in a college library. I’ve spent much of my life in the library so I probably know more about where things are than they do.

One of the most intriguing aspects of a college library environment is the quest for space. I don’t have to worry about finding a desk or table to perform my duties because one is already set aside for me to assist patrons. But the patron must find a table or chair to study or a workstation from which to scroll through Facebook pages or YouTube videos. (I think it is hilarious that there are signs on the workstations saying “These Computers Are Reserved fo Academic Research Only” when half of the monitors I see show the Facebook websites on any given day.) Yet what intrigues me about working in the library is the quest for space and the array of conventions used by students to establish personal territory.

Butted table-tops. (See first picture.) The circular or rectangular table-tops in my work area are about 3 ½ feet in diameter. Normally when I arrive to work, I will see two or three tables butted together but only one occupant. The occupant is sometimes waiting for two or three fellow students. Gender tends to play a role in this phenomenon, as women tend to study with other women while men tend to be solitary when they study. But since the tables are 3 ½feet in diameter, three “ordinary” sized people should be able to comfortably share a single table. (I know, I know: we are all fat Americans, right?) Yet two or three people using two tables is overkill. Which leads to. . .

Reserving chairs and tables simply by leaving personal effects on them. This occurrence is widespread. Visualize the following scenario. There is one table with three chairs. There is one student sitting in one of the three chairs.  Yet he or she has placed his or her laptop in one chair and a knapsack or book bag in the other. So three chairs at this table are presumably “occupied”, although there is only one human being using the table. For prospective library patrons looking for a study area, this particular table has been exclusively cordoned off by this one patron. (See second picture.)  In this picture, the woman’s purse also appears to be “studying”. While there is an empty chair across from the woman for another person to sit and share the table, she has made it clear that her bag will not defer its chair to a prospective human occupant. This isn’t bad in itself but when there are several other people at tables doing the same thing, demand for tables and chairs goes through the roof.

This scenario is laughable insofar as it expresses the vanity of claiming a public object for one’s self or for one’s property. The mind of the college student who perpetrates this act is sadly misinformed by our system of commodity and exchange, which seeks to place a value on everything, including abstractions such as “space”.  For the table hogger, he or she feels leaving belongings on the table constitutes the purchase of that table for his or her exclusive use. The problem is compounded when the occupant leaves the table for extended period of time, yet leaves his or her belongings at the table.

During peak periods when library traffic is high, a table that is being “used”, but with no human occupant, presents problems: for one, it inconveniences other patrons who need tables to attend to their studies. It is also a waste of resources from the library’s point of view: fewer individuals can use tables when a single individual has laid exclusive claim to them and fails to maximize the use of them from the community’s perspective. (See third picture.) In this picture the table (foreground) is “occupied” by a single individual: there is a single book bag on the table-top with a book and notepaper. In an attempt to preserve “ownership” of this table, the patron has left his or her stuff at the table. I see this very often, but I’ve also seen people leave valuables such as iPods, cell phones, laptops, and purses unattended for hours!

Nothing is more instinctive to the capitalist mind but to declare a thing “mine”: even when that thing is shared by all. Tables and chairs in libraries are publicly shared objects. Perhaps the lesson to be learned here is that we perhaps need to get library patrons in general to understand knowledge as a communal endeavor instead of as an object to be individually possessed at all costs. Libraries exist to serve the needs of all knowledge seekers, so it should make sense that we can share library furniture as well as books, right?

H.E. Whitney, Jr. is a PhD student in history at Florida State University. H.E’s fields of study are the history of science, intellectual history, and technology and culture. H.E. is originally from Suffolk, Virginia but has called California, Ohio, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Florida home at some point. H.E. has taught philosophy and graphic design/multimedia studies at the college level and enjoy creating digital art when not pontificating on scientific, cultural, or historical matters.

The Good Quiz

The Good Quiz: How good are you?

Answer the following questions with absolute honesty and tally your number of yes answers and no answers to see how good you are.

Do you think that female humans are in any way inferior to male humans? Yes or No
Do you think that people who do not share your identical and exact religious views are inferior to you? Yes or No
Do you think that people of a certain ethnicity are in any way inferior to you and your own exact blend of ethnic backgrounds? Yes or No
Do you think that people who do not believe in God are in any way inferior to you or less good than you? Yes or No
Do you think that people who are attracted to their own gender are imperfect? Yes or No
Do you think that homosexual people are a potential dangerous threat to the safety and well-being of children? Yes or No
Do you think that female humans should be treated differently to male humans with regards to rights and freedoms?  Yes or No
Do you think that physically less able people are less important or of less value than the able? Yes or No
Do you think that “mentally unwell” people are less important than the “normal”? Yes or No
Do you think that people who have different moral standards with regards to sex and promiscuity are not as good as yourself? Yes or No
Do you think that gay people are not naturally so inclined? Yes or No
Do you think that governments and religions should prevent two people of the same gender from marrying each other? Yes or No
Do you think it is alright to put someone to death or imprison them for adultery or flirting? Yes or No
Do you think that the poor and/or homeless should be completely responsible for their current circumstances? Yes or No
Do you think that elderly people are less important or valuable than the young? Yes or No

Answers:

• If you answered with 15 NO answers, you are good.
• If you answered with 14 or less NO answers, you are not good, and you should seriously consider being less horrible.

Note, some contentious  issues, such as abortion, and euthanasia etc., have been deliberately omitted from the quiz, because everyone seems to think one camp is right and the other wrong, and few people ever change their mind. Among the truly objective, there may never be a general yes or no answer on such issues, but the truly objective are a rare minority.

A need to consider perspective.

By Sig Shonholtz

I have been trying to bridge a gap of understanding, which seems to define many relationships. For lack of a better phrase (I welcome any better phrase) I am calling it a philosophical anomaly.

I will explain it best in an experience I had with an old girlfriend. I was driving the car and she was my passenger. I was driving in a sort of jerky fashion and she said to “can you drive a little nicer”, which I did.. A week later she was driving and I had to make the same request of her, “can you drive a little nicer, please (hers was a demand, mine a request)?” But instead of changing her driving she argued that I made the request because she had said it to me the week before. I argued (pointed out) that last week I was the driver and this week I am a passenger and my perspective was completely different.

This got me wondering about how many possible perspectives a person could have during any 24 hour period. These perspectives are not points of view, because as many people as there are on earth is as many points of view there are.

After a few months of day dreaming about it I settled on 6 possibilities (permutations). Since driving was the inspiration for the theme I kept it as my model. But we could just as easily use an example of dining in a restaurant.

The First Perspective is driving a car by ourselves. It does not matter so much how we drive (unless we are being unsafe to others). We are alone with our thoughts and awarenesses. Like eating alone and sitting at a table.

The Second Perspective is driving the car with a passenger in the front seat, we need to be more aware and thoughtful of that person sitting next to us. Our driving style and our conversation impacts them. Like eating with a friend and “driving” the conversation, or just doing the talking at that moment.

The Third Perspective is from the passenger in the front seats point of view. The passenger is now sitting at the table. Each time the conversation shifts back and forth one person is either in the second or third perspective.

The Fourth Perspective is that of a passenger in the back seat. They may be participating or not but they are observers. This would, for example be someone in an audience, an observer on an event. Or perhaps a person at a dinner table not really being addressed but watching. Theirs is actually  privileged because they may notice things in the dynamics that others do not see.

The Fifth Perspective is the time we spend sleeping. Since these Six Perspectives take up 24 hours of each day time we spend sleeping must be included. We are not so aware during that time though.

The Sixth Perspective is not really a perspective it is imaginative but it might be most important one although it is very hard to achieve. I am calling it the ultimate perspective. In order to try and have the ultimate Perspective we must try and exit our humanity. We must pretend or imagine that we have not interest in human affairs. So, when I want this insight I imagine I am a science officer on an interstellar space craft. I do not really care about human affairs. I am not myself, an American Jewish man that is 55 years old and from California that likes watches. When I take this Perspective I am free to decide right and wrong good or bad and up and down. Things are much more clear from this position. In fact morality is just a changing concept.

In my case the Second and Third Perspectives are the ones between my former girlfriend and I, and myself and my former girlfriend. I am continuously to exhaustion either the passenger or the driver and cannot seem to explain that our differences are more to do with this simple idea than anything else.

I have noticed this dynamic in another area which I will try and explain. It is something like this. As a child we argue when someone older then us tells us not to do something. We will argue with them that, because they do it, we can do it. It goes something like this, we have all been in this moment. You tell a child not to eat with their mouthful, but inevitably we do the same thing so they argue and say “you do the same thing”. In my case, with my young daughter we sometimes say yah instead of yes. She does not use the word yah and is always correcting us, (this example is almost the opposite of what I am trying to say).

As adults we have the same problem but this time when we say, “you do the same thing” we mean something else. We are accusing the person of not being aware that when they are in the Second Perspective they cannot imagine themselves in the Third and vice versa. This is the problem I have, trying to convey this very simple idea of trying to see oneself as we might be seen.

I do not know if I am clear on the one above. It has been very difficult for me it articulate it. I actually was trying to find a philosophical numeric system or a way to quantify this last one. It is so common between people that it is almost a normal way we react to things.

(the-vu Editor’s note) there has been considerable study of perspective in the field of psychology, but when someone acquires a need to consider perspective due to real and personal circumstances, it brings the concept to practical life.