The Observer, April 27, 2007
Volume XXXIX, Issue 26
Worst Case Scenario: Coping Without Housing
It's almost the end of the school year. Unless you're lucky enough to be a senior, you should have figured out by now where to live this summer and next semester. If you're a procrastinator like me, however, then you have absolutely no idea where you're going to live.
Who really needs a house in the first place? Just live in the library. It sounds absurd, but is actually entirely possible. What you are about to read is my plan for a semester in Kelvin Smith Library.
The first task is finding a place to sleep. KSL is full of them, with study rooms and couches on every floor of the building. If you're really dedicated, you can drag a couch into a study room. With a lock and a light switch, you're set for the night. Each room even has a table, chairs, Internet, and air conditioning, and is bigger than most dorm rooms. This already sounds like a classified ad for an apartment!
For entertainment, the library claims to have an extensive collection of DVD and VHS movies, though I doubt they have classics like Debbie Does Dallas (it's like Bring it On, but more serious) or Deep Throat (I think that one is about Watergate). There's also the Friedman Center, where you can hack into Financial Aid records and compensate for the Ohio Student Choice Grant that you're probably going to lose next year.
Personal hygiene is another problem. No one wants to be the smelly kid's lab partner, and even World of Warcraft junkies can boast about their monthly showers. Veale has the perfect solution: showers, toilets, sinks, and lockers. Best of all, you don't even have to clean them! Good hygiene, however, also involves washing your clothes occasionally. You can probably go a good month with a nice pair of jeans and a T-shirt rotation, but when a new life form is created from the dirt that's collected in the fabric, take them over to a fountain or the lagoon and wash them hobo-style. There are only a few drawbacks: the giant silver phallus may turn your clothes blue (Spartan pride, woot!), the wet/dry fountain is usually a dry/dry fountain, and you might get mugged by that guy in all the security reports.
Food is generally an issue for most college students. Living off the vending machines in KSL might not suffice, even though they did recently add a coffee machine. There's always the option to go covert ops and sneak into the highly defended Fribley or Leutner. You could also dig up the acorns the squirrels have been hiding all year, or just go hunt the overfed Case squirrels themselves. There's nothing like the smell of fresh squirrel roasting over a Bunsen burner, with a dash of sodium chloride.
Although not having a place to live next year may sound intimidating, there are always alternatives. When life gives you lemons, make hard lemonade and have a party in the library!
