The Big Ol' But

"I was dating a guy and we ended it. In the divorce settlement he got 209." -Martha Todd, CC '07

It's that time of year. While the rest of New York City is reveling in the first snow, Columbia University enters a twilight zone, where 3 a.m. means you'll barely find a free seat open in Butler. Our cheeks aren't ruddy from the outdoors-we're peaked and pasty. Our eyes are swollen shut, we are breaking out, we've upped the cigarette intake to counter the caffeine pills and the coffee, we look bewildered, we are surviving on a diet of Miss Vickie's chips and Red Bulls, and we whine to our friends at other schools on our cell phones in the hallway that we were all up "all night. No, literally all night."
Yup, it's finals time here in Butler Library. Finals at every school means, as my pop says, "putting your nose to the grindstone." Students hunker down and knock off their papers, marathon-read four months worth of assignments, and take their tests. We're not different in terms of the fact that we study hard-we're different because we have a communal 24-hour home where we feed off of each other's insanity.
The 24/7 factor is actually unique. At Princeton, supposedly to force their brainy undergrads to form social relationships, Firestone Library closes at 11:45 p.m. Yale, though it has charming mini-libraries with wood paneling and leather chairs (sigh) at each of its residential colleges, its big library also shuts its doors right before midnight. The Web site at Harvard boasts that "there are over 90 libraries at Harvard that comprise the Harvard library system," with names like Biblioteca Berenson and specificity for topics such as horticulture. Well, what we lack in numbers and endowment, we make up in reliability. If it's past 11 p.m., no need to check in Starr or Avery, we're all right here-night after night.
Columbians love sexualizing Butler. We call ourselves "Butler whores" and create subtle facebook group titles like: "We like to have hot sex in Butler and then get coffee from Blue Java." Do not be fooled, though: these eroticized comments point to the reality that the Columbians in Butler are not getting any at all. No matter, some claim-Butler is also the home of self-love. The facebook group puts it bluntly: "I masturbate in Butler all the time." But judging from the filthy bathroom stalls, I doubt much is going on in them. My friend "Avi Z.," however, maintains, "I always use the fourth floor handicap."
Though the sensationalists love talking about sex in the stacks, there's a lot of romance that happens right in these very reading rooms. Sure, you've got the pawing couples and the prolonged goodbye kiss turned make-out session, but what about public dating woes? As I type these words from my alcove in 303, I watch a couple fight across a table in tense whispers. Oh! He just gave her the look of death and left the room in a huff. She's chasing after him. This is pure entertainment.
For the more technologically sophisticated, poking and instant messaging provides ample procrastination, as well as a way to intimately stalk what is known as "the library crush." But for the rare breed of facebook resisters, relying on actual face-to-face interaction remains key (weirdos). One of the great last-standing conscientious objectors, "Callie R.," proclaimed, "I like interacting with people. I like smiling at them. Having facebook would demystify the experience of what I like to call the "smile friend." While these smile friends often don't progress to the next level, there are other ways to forge a lasting bond. Like spending the night together.
There is nothing more intimate than the relationship you create with the guy in the hoodie sitting across the wooden table, as you labor over your CC paper. As the hours wear on, you no longer have to mouth "watch my computer" as you go to Pinnacle for your fifth cup of coffee. By the time 6 a.m. rolls around, you've entered the deepest recesses of each other's souls without saying a word.
As I've progressed in my career as a coed, so too has my appreciation of this library and its layered social culture. I've matured; last night I even gave up my foot-rest chair to a wanderer. So buck up, Columbians, and show your school spirit in the only way you know how: drooling all over yourselves at 4 a.m.

Originally called South Hall when it was built in 1934, our library was renamed Butler after Nicholas Murray Butler, University president from 1902-1945 and successor to Seth Low, of Low Library fame. Found typed on the wall of Butler's facebook profile, "Hey Butler, you and Low should get it on!"