Recently, I overheard a girl saying the following into her cell phone ? “Yeah, I like candy..uh,huh, candy is good … Snickers is my favorite … do you think eating too much candy is making me fat?”
Cell phones have dumbed down real, genuine conversation. Some people feel that they cannot be out of contact with their friends for a single minute.
However, it is not my place to question why so many of my fellow students need to check their voicemail as soon as the professor ends his lecture or scream into their phone so loud that it disturbs everyone within 100 feet.
In this example, the exchange between the girl and her cell phone was not in Wilson Commons or the Academic Quad, though ? those conversations are bearable. No, it was in Rush Rhees Library.
The place where people go to remove themselves for a few hours to get work done. The place where being quiet and not talking is the general rule. So why does she feel that the “not talking” rule does not apply to her cell phone?
It has gotten so ridiculous that the other day I walked into a room of the library, and every person ? okay, only three other people were there, but still ? was chatting away on their phones. When I gave one of the cell phone talkers a glance that said “turn that phone off before I break out a can of whoopass,” she looked at me as if I was ignorant and did not know the joys of the cellular phone. I do have a cell phone, but I am courteous enough to keep it out of the library.
Unlike many others, I do not need to bring it with because I don’t need to talk to anyone while I am trying to study and cell phones in Rush Rhees are as annoying as paying for printing in the ITS center.
My whole point is this ? be respectful and cease talking on your phone in the library. If you must have your phone at the library, have the common decency to put the silent ringer on and leave the library before answering incoming calls.
Most students are there to study and do not need to be interrupted every two minutes by someone else’s phone call. Also, for all of you that think sitting outside the Periodical Reading Room with your phone excuses you, please think again. Your conversations echo throughout both the Great Hall and the PRR and thus are still very irritating. People shouldn’t have the option to make these calls, cell phones in the library should be banned.
I have no doubt that the administration will be in full support of such a ban after learning that other universities, such as Yale University, do not allow cell phones in their libraries. We clearly want to be like an Ivy League school ? remember how we followed Harvard and its freshman housing ? so why not follow Yale’s restriction of cell phone usage.
There are many places on campus to talk on a cell phone, but only a few places to study quietly. UR should go the extra mile and tell students to take their phones outside.
Snyder is a junior and can be reached at asnyder@campustimes.org.
