"WHO KNOWS ONLY HIS OWN GENERATION REMAINS ALWAYS A CHILD."
This text, etched in stone across Norlin's West entrance, has stared out at the sunset behind the mighty flatirons since the building was erected in 1940. In that time, it has seen a myriad of generations, students, and cultures. What it hasn't seen in these many years is change. Until now.
The quote is a simple one. Boiled down, it really just wants to stress the importance of education. It promotes knowledge beyond one's self and one's immediate surroundings, and that's totally cool. It's fitting quote for a library (and a History teacher's classroom decoration). It's a pocketable little phrase that you can whip out at class reunions to impress the one that got away by sounding like a wise old sage.
It also feels like I'm constantly being scolded and berated by my library, which keeps calling me a child. "Who knows only his own generation remains always a child" turns the library from a sanctuary of study into a bully (with a strong sense of importance for education) who keeps heckling me across the Quad. Come on, library, don't be like that. This is what I see when I look at my library.
Because I hope to reach out to other students who don't like to be bullied by their library, and most importantly, because I think it's hilarious, here is a compiled list of alternative quotes that would be a better fit:
1. Norlin Library: Come Sleep on Our Beds and Tell Your Friends You're Studying
2. Come for Your Textbook, Stay Because You're Lost in the Stacks
3. Netflix Works Here Too
4. Find Someone Attractive to Sit Next to and Impress Them with your Work Ethic Which We Both Know Is a Fluke
5. From Judy Blume to Nietzsche
6. We Have Animorphs!
7. More Open than the GOP Debate
(Easy target, I know)
8. Norlin Library: A Place to Study... Or a Place to Pretend to Study
9. Norlin Library: So Much Cooler Than All those Other Campus Libraries
10. As Featured in Playboy Magazine
11. It Smells Like Stale Sweat, Caffeine, and Self-Loathing in Here.
12. Norlin Library: A Place Where Everyone Pretends to be More Put Together Than They Actually Are
13. Let Us Put Our Words Inside You :)
14. Who Knows Only Their Own Generation Remains Always a Child
15. The Dali Lama Was Almost Here!
16. Norlin Library: Your Tuition Dollars Live Here
17. "How Fast Does a Zebra Have to Run Before it Looks Gray?" -- Demitri Martin
18. Your Parents Would Want You to be Here
19. FREE PENS!!
20. Norlin Library: Your First Choice for a Cheap Date
21. "When you ear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar. You're only telling the world that you fear what he might say." -- Tyrion Lannister (This one might need a smaller font.)
All this to say that the time for change is upon us. There is no shortage of quotes and wisdom that would vamp our library's prestige.
Tune in next week when we rethink "Enter Here the Timeless Fellowship of the Human Spirit."
