All I Wanted was to Eat my Dang Bagel

Some prick at the library told me I couldn't eat my dang bagel inside because it wasn't from the vending machine.  I smiled, took my happy rear end outside and ate my flipping bagel. Then I took all my bottled up rage...and wrote a letter to the school newspaper's editor.  I'll let you know if it gets published.

A quick note: To the vast majority of those reading, you will not be familiar with Tuscaloosa.  So in case you find yourself wondering what the "Black Warrior" is, it is the main river that flows through the city and adjacent to campus. 

To the Editor:

Nearly every day, I enjoy a bagel in the designated student “lounge” before I start studying at Rodgers Library.  Before I could take a bite Thursday, I was told by someone on staff that food from home was against policy.  However, I was allowed to enjoy something from the vending machine.  I was told that there were benches outside where I could eat food from home.  Splendid: The cigarette ash-covered, rarely manicured, anything but comfortable, black benches outside, where the temperature was 20 degrees cooler and wind-blown mist made my bagel soggy. 

I have no issue with the kind staff person.   What chaps me is the policy—another regrettable result of a large academic bureaucracy that leaves too many people with the idle time to make idiotic rules.  Undoubtedly, if they get the chance, they will respond in one of two ways.  1. The policy was necessary to avoid a foreseen problem.  2.  The policy is long standing and should be observed, regardless of opinion. 

At its worst, the policy isn’t rooted in practical thinking, similar to the state of Arkansas’ law against mispronouncing “Arkansas” while within the borders.  At its best (comparatively), the library policy is rooted in a commercial interest to encourage buying from the vending machines.  Well, you’ll have to forgive me; In the midst of paying my way through school, I don’t want to drop a buck on “Andy Capps’ Delicious Hot Fries” that have enough sodium to dry up the Black Warrior.  

Perhaps they would argue that food from home creates more mess.  Garbage.  My bagel leaves no trace. 

Should I also refrain from defecating in the library’s bathrooms if my stools aren’t the direct result of munchies from the vending machine?  “That’s ridiculous” you may say.  The current policy is what’s ridiculous.

Casey T. Sturgill
csturgill@crimson.ua.edu