If you, like me, identify as a “reading room person,” then you may have noticed that some of the chairs in there have mysteriously gone missing lately. Intrepid reading room devotees have supplemented the loss with the addition of those annoying, wheelie chairs from the atrium or by conspicuously dragging one of the comfy brown chairs to a spot at a table. While I am impressed by their dedication, I argue that it shouldn’t be necessary and is ultimately harmful. The reading room is much less depressing than the dark and cavernous rows of cubicles that fill most of MSEL, and ruining its aesthetic superiority with the addition of foreign chairs threatens to undermine and destroy the very qualities that make the reading room great. In an effort to put an end to the madness, I have searched high and low for these missing chairs. Ahead is a short list of their possible locations.
- Gilman Bell Tower: lost things always end up in bell towers, so this should be an obvious starting point. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it.
- The Hopkins administration “closed” them: The reading room has an undoubtedly humanities vibe, so it makes sense that in its endless quest to disenfranchise the humanities, the Hopkins administration stole them so they could be better utilized in some all important STEM lab.
- The Cordish Lacrosse Center: It’s not enough that they have their own building. They have to take our chairs, too.
- The Steam Tunnels: The steam tunnels are basically Hopkins’ version of the Room of Requirement-your bobby pins are probably all down there, too.