A group study room in the Bailey Library. Sara Faraj | Washtenaw Voice
By Aina Zaidi
Contributor
Students have recently noticed Paul, 18, has a habit of locking himself in a study room at 11:20 a.m. every weekday at WCC, which is prime time to grab a study room since classes don’t get out for another ten minutes. Students have gone to the front desk to complain, only to be turned away by the librarians, who have resorted to putting out a sign whenever the study rooms are full, including: “No Study Rooms Available,” and an additional one for when Paul makes his rounds: “Yes, Paul has one.”
Despite the two hour study room time limit at Bailey Library, students were still complaining about Paul hogging GM132, which, coincidentally, is the farthest study room from librarians.
Long after his timer would have buzzed, Paul had still not emerged from the room. When librarians were pestered to investigate, they found that Paul wasn’t responding to their loud knocks and yelling from outside the door. Despite not listening to any form of audio, he gave no reaction.
The three librarians who had dedicated themselves to dealing with Paul slowly started to give up, as Paul continued to stare at his notebook for a prolonged period. It may be important to note that the notebook was, in fact, blank. Kathy, 42, one of the librarians assigned to the case, kindly made an attempt to provide this information by showing us a picture she had taken of Paul’s notebook, which was heavily zoomed in, very pixelated and ultimately had almost no significance to the investigation.
An anonymous source reported that they witnessed a librarian begin to plaster the infamous WCC stickers in various places across the library to “destress” after this incident. Students sitting closer to the librarian’s desk noted, however, that the three women were collectively happy about being able to gain a significant amount of steps for their daily Fitbit goal, which is reported to be over thirty thousand steps per day (thrice the amount of steps an average active person is expected to take), placing the librarians in the running to qualify for Women’s Track for Tokyo’s Olympics in 2020.
When asked to comment, Kathy affirmed that this was indeed one of their goals and Paul was “just another hurdle” they would have to jump over. She made sure to emphasize the word “hurdle,” probably alluding to the actual hurdles competition in the Olympics. We’re not sure.
When Paul was asked about why he had a group room when he was studying in solitary, Paul said: “oh, they’re on their way,” probably referring to his friend group, but there was no other source to confirm that.
Onlookers who were at the library until Paul left the room reported that nobody entered or left the room, except Paul. When asked about this, Paul declined to comment by saying “he had a lot of work to do,” despite having just left the study room.
