OCR Text |
Show One Girl Caused The Tanner Room Closing Editor: "Great events are often due to small causes." This statement by the ! French playwright, Scribe, unfortunately applies to the closing of the Tanner Room. There never were, in fact, "sack lunches spread out by the students." No one ever "threw apple cores on the carpets." No "cigartte burns, candy wrappers, spilled drinks and general disregard" closed the Tanner ' Room. The Tanner room was closed because of one girl's faux pas! I am that girl- This is what happened : "Stunned Embarrassment" J, During Christmas vacation one of the Library's architects told me of the wonders of the new Tanner Room. So the first day of school I arranged with my ride to read there until he would be free to pick me up. (Had I only known he wouldn't be coming for nine hours!) After waiting a while I became hungry, but was afraid to leave the area, thinking he would I be coming any minute. Finally I ate a small sandwich I had tucked into my purse, then took a couple of bites from an apple. At that moment an attendant approached me and very politely said, "Sorry, but we'll have i to ask you not to eat in here." Immediately I pursed the apple and sat there stunned with embarrassment. "After all your European education," I cursed myself, "and you do a thing like that!" And then I looked around me noticing how all the other students in the room had been so "well-behaved." "Just An Apple" After a while, one of the heads of the Library came rushing in rather upset. He marched right toward me (I was then quietly reading), sud- denly stopped in his tracks, looked puzzled and turned back to, the attendant. at-tendant. "I heard some was eating up here!" "Someone was," replied the attendant, "but I asked her to stop, and she did." "Well! We'll have to put up some no-eating signs around here," he said and left. - Several hours after that, another director came in and very apologetically apolo-getically asked the students to leave, as he had been forced to close the room. I moved to a hard bench outside the door and had taken up my reading when the director came over to me and said how sorry he was to have disturbed us. I gathered up some courage and blurted out, "Oh sir, I'm so sorry. I'm afraid I'm to blame for all this. I was just eating an apple." (Not enough courage to mention the sandwich.) "Oh, no, it wasn't just that. They've been s-p-r-e-a-d-i-n-g out their sack lunches up here." Grandma's Parlor ' From then on the Tanner Room was closed. Then I heard it was opened a while the other day, so I called the Library to find out when it was available now to the students. The lady took on a reproving tone of voice: "Well, we don't like it to be closed like a grandma's parlor, but when the students don't know how to take care of it and throw apple cores on the carpets and s-p-r-e-a-d out their sack lunches, we can only allow them in when there's an attendant at the desk to watch them. And I couldn't say when that will be." After having wearily sat in our just outside the Tanner Room for nine long hours (much longer than any of the directors were ever there) on the day it was closed, I can assure them that no one did anything to harm their treasure. No one, to my amazement, acted more like they were on hallowed ground than the fellows clad in the worst-looking bluejeans, as they admired in awe the Barcelona chairs of what has since, indeed, been turned into "grandma's parlor." I beg forgiveness of the architects, the administration, the Library directors, the student body and Prof. O. C. Tanner, and hope that the Tanner Room may once again be enjoyed and respected by all. The Girl (who committed the faux pas that closed the Tanner Room) |