Ladies and gentlemen. Long have I been silently disturbed by this problem. I’ve whispered warnings into the study group chat, hastily sending red-alert texts like “don’t go near the back of the second floor, it’s bad.” But on Monday night, something so egregious, so vile, so traumatizing happened to me that I knew I had to issue a public safety announcement. I was peacefully walking through the KSL stacks, trying to find a good place to catch up on the previous five weeks of lectures I slept through the night before my exam, as one does, when all of a sudden, my eyes were assaulted by a couple’s re-enactment of 50 Shades of Grey. In the first floor stacks. Right next to the Dewey Decimals.

Now, there are things Kelvin Smith Library is designed for: crying, questioning your major, silently judging what people write on their white boards, etc. What it was NOT built for is serving as the set of your erotic fan fiction. And yet, every single day, couples treat KSL like it’s the Bachelor Mansion with better Wi-Fi (sort of).

You’ve seen them. You know them. The couples who decide to “go on a date” to KSL. Apparently, nothing screams romance like splitting a Dunkin’ doughnut and gazing longingly at each other over the glow of dual MacBooks. Then, there are the hand-holders. And not just across the table—oh no. They hold hands under the table, over the table, while typing, while scrolling, while breathing. For what purpose? If you’re that worried your partner will wander off, maybe go on a better date than KSL.

And then, dear reader, the massages. Some couples look around the stressed room and think, “You know what this space needs? A deep tissue rubdown.” No one, absolutely no one, should have to watch shoulder kneading next to Cramelot Cafe.

Finally, the breakups. KSL has witnessed more heartbreak than Tinder, Hinge and the Bachelor franchise combined. There is nothing more soul-crushing than sitting on the third floor, trying to memorize glycolysis, while five feet away someone whispers, “it’s not you, it’s me,” and the other person bursts into tears over a copy of Transcendentals of Calculus.

Look, I get it. Love is powerful. However, KSL is not a love nest, it’s a graveyard of happiness, a mausoleum of stress and the only relationship I want to witness is between x and y on a coordinate plane. Please, for the love of Kelvin, keep the hand-holding, the straddling, the massages and the dramatic break-ups out of the stacks and let us all fail in peace.

1. No sex.
2. Break-ups should happen only in collaboration commons so everyone can be a part of your journey.
3. Hand-holding is limited to fire drills.
4. Cuddling on the second floor couch tables is punishable by exile to Thwing.
5. Massages = immediate removal. Take that back to Planet Fitness.
6. The stacks are for books not straddling.