We’ve Created a (La)Monster

The worker bees at University Hall have forgotten to tell you something: They’ve already built you a student center. It’s multiple floors, it’s open 24 hours, and soon will boast a hopping café. Hundreds of students pass through its doors everyday. Actually, you’ve already been there. It’s Lamont Library, and the plan will be completed as soon as they throw out the books.

Administrators tonight are unveiling Lamont’s newest addition: a late night café. The ground floor eatery, which has been inspiringly dubbed—brace yourselves—the Lamont Library Café, will serve up (likely) bad coffee and (certainly) fatty snacks to starving students.

The library has undergone big changes in the last year or so, and now it’s less of a library. Last October, Lamont began keeping its doors open 24 hours a day, five days a week. UC politicos celebrated Lamont’s 24/5 premiere by throwing a Finale and Felipe’s catered powwow in the library foyer.

The fête turned into a mob scene as students trampled each other to snatch up lukewarm burritos and chocolate chip cookies. Even HUPD made an appearance to calm the masses. Clusters of tourists snapped on in amazement. Eventually, everyone returned to their carrels and resumed studying.

As a result of Lamont 24/5, the library became the new slumber party (minus the pillow fights). Students began to camp out in the library for days on end. This was particularly the case during finals, when Lamont junkies only occasionally left their desks to dash out for foodstuffs, or maybe a much needed shower. The truly hard-core students even brought Primal Scream to the library—a contingent of a dozen or so nudists conga-lined through the third floor. Some promising political careers died that warm spring night.

And now that Lamont has a café, we will never have to leave.

Our library now serves all fundamental human needs. Even sexual desires can come true in Lamont Land. An Oct. 9 Craigslist post advertised: “…want to hit the bathroom tonight? let me know ASAP. send stats and pic or i won’t bother. let me know when you’ll be there or how to find you in the library. hot stud here…” The ad is one of many Lamont-specific on Craigslist Boston. Next: the installment of condom boxes at the reserves desk.

Leave it to Harvard students to make a student center out of a study space. Lamont is not even efficient anymore, because its inhabitants are going insane. Not only do they not sleep (unless you count drooling facedown on a desk as sleeping), they have slim contact with the world outside the library. Sexual and social frustration is so thick in Lamont’s reading rooms that even the most chaste study-worm feels violated.

Harvard students, liberate yourselves. Swing open those heavy doors and take in the crisp air of Harvard Yard. Venture back to your dorm and reunite with that roommate you haven’t seen in weeks. Even try Widener.

Getting the most out of the library, it seems, requires leaving it. Go to the Lamont Library Café and eat some stale confections. Even have a quickie in the Microfiche wing. But for your own sake, leave the place sometime.



Lucy M. Caldwell ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, is a history and science concentrator in Adams House.