This article is not about the logistics, the statistics or the inadequacies of either the plan for a new library. What Chancellor Coombe’s recent announcement provides us with is an opportunity to meditate on the meaning of the grassroots movement, led by students, faculty and staff, to oppose the Board of Trustees’ unilateral decision to move 80 percent of this university’s books into off-campus storage.
When news officially broke in the spring, the ensuing conflict framed the time, conversation and imagination of many on this campus. I would like to discuss for a moment the stakes, the players and the meaning of the outcome. Moving 80 percent of the Penrose book collection into off-campus storage would have seriously jeopardized the academic vitality of this institution. More importantly,the practical questions of research and pedagogy of the debate over the library concerned questions about the definition of reality itself.
What is a library? This was at stake. Our culture grows increasingly inauthentic. It is slowly becoming a long plastic hallway filled with the buzz of fluorescent lights. You can get “Steak-ums” but never a real steak, always the facsimile, something close but never the real thing.
Looked at from this angle, the decision by a group of number obsessed business-types to remove almost all of the books from a library was really just a small symbol of a broader cultural trend. The scribbles and sounds we interpret as “library” would have begun to lose all meaning.
They threatened to return again to the subtle howl and buzz of the fluorescent lights. Things without meaning. And it is in this fact, the fact that our inner constructs of Library or God or Supermarket or Love are losing meaning, that we find the terrible anxiety that comes standard with existence in modern human society. The victory of the “Save Penrose” movement then is not only one of logistics, but one of meanings.
This victory is enhanced when we consider the players. A group of passionate but disorganized and underfunded students, faculty and staff against the administration of a major university and a board of multimillion-dollar donors; these were the two sides of the issue.
Against such odds, the fact that a group organized primarily through word of mouth and social media was able to change a university plan by 30 percent is nothing but a success. Fifty percent is not perfect, but it is a library. It is 500,000 books that will be kept on campus versus 200,000.
Finally, one of the opposition movement’s primary objectives was to assert that no university decision can be made without the consultation of students, faculty and staff. Chancellor Coombe’s email acknowledged this fact. Future vigilance on the part of the university community is imperative.
Considered in global terms, a plan to remove 80 percent of the books from this university’s campus was a relatively minor decision, which is to say that opposing it was the most important thing in the world.
I cannot simply ask for a more authentic culture. I cannot stand up to McDonald’s or to Disney. I can, however, stand up to this university’s administration. It is the most important thing because it is the only thing we can do. Our victory is but a modest one.
Brandon Reich-Sweet helped to organize the Facebook campaign Save the Stacks, savepenrose.com and the student activism movement opposing DU’s removal of 80 percent of the Penrose book collection from the DU campus.
