COLUMN: Quench your thirst in the Rosengarten Reserve

From Ron Lin's, "Intellectual Pornography," Fall '00 From Ron Lin's, "Intellectual Pornography," Fall '00I like cold beverages. I like hot beverages. I like alcoholic beverages. I like all beverages, regardless of color, sexual orientation or boiling point. All week, The Daily Pennsylvanian has focused on the effects of the alcohol crackdown that began a year ago. Yet another even more scandalous policy escaped its notice, a policy lurking among us and affecting far more than our mere and inconsequential social lives. Why is it that the policies that affect our academic lives can be so easily ignored? Fellow students, I speak of nothing else but the tyrannical and seemingly mystifying ban on beverages of all kinds in Van Pelt Library. Perhaps this policy sheds light on the ultimate goal of the University administration -- to eventually rid students of all beverages, regardless of alcoholic content. Sure, it begins with mere limitations on alcohol. But the brash policy abolishing the consumption of all beverages in Van Pelt represents clear and wanton malice toward beverages in general. What separates us today from Prohibition? What will I do without Snapple and to what would I turn at 2 a.m. if I had not my coffee? I assert that under the guise of "alcoholism," beverage-control advocates in the administration are methodically waging a campaign across campus to eliminate our most sacred American privilege -- the right to bear beverage. And it begins in Van Pelt. Beverages serve many social, intellectual and otherwise positive purposes in our daily lives. Beer and coffee stimulate social engagements; milk does a body good; Mountain Dew can even be used as a crude, non-invasive birth control method. In response to this ill-advised policy, the University has fostered an atmosphere encouraging -- if not glorifying -- furtive criminality. The beverage-smuggling trade has blossomed, compelling desperate students to shelter a midnight beverage under their coats, in their pockets or in hard-to-search body cavities, all in defiance of the prying gaze of Van Pelt entrance guards. The grossly terrible effects that the ban on beverages in Van Pelt imposes upon the student body transcend far beyond rampant criminality and rebelliousness. It denies students necessary nutrients and stimulants for enduring the ritual studying process, of which beverages are a vital component. Is not water a beverage, and does it not constitute 65 percent of our bodies? For every person longing for a career, for success, for wealth, perhaps it is sobering to realize that we are all nothing more than mere beverages ourselves. True, I am a man. But is a man nothing more than a beverage? Beverage-control advocates would have us believe that beverages kill books. People kill books, not beverages. Is the administration really afraid of crazed beverages running loose in Rosengarten, patently spraying liquids everywhere and destroying innocent books and the plush carpeting? Rather than a total ban, perhaps enforcement of proper beverage etiquette is a more reasonable policy for protecting library property. The irony of Van Pelt's limitation on beverage consumption is that the library has gained notoriety as the ideal place to have wild and adventurous sex. Therefore, it seems that the lack of a "no sex" policy in Van Pelt implies that I can indeed have sex in the library, but heaven forbid I indulge myself in a Coolatta. Rather than succumb to the pressures of thirst and hunger, students resort to dangerous and increasingly risky means of smuggling contraband beverages into the library. Earlier this week, a friend of mine became another casualty in this victimless war while plotting to bring a small container of clam chowder soup into Rosengarten. The risky endeavor cost him a backpack, as chowder spewed explosively from its cardboard confines, covering his books and notes with an odoriferous and slightly obscene coat of milky white liquid. The administration should review its policy and consider the context of our visits to the library. What about considering the customer experience in the library? Beverage consumption is a vital component of the studying process, a means of gratuitous oral stimulation and a potent caffeine delivery mechanism. In light of the impossibility of enforcing the supposed beverage ban in Van Pelt, I ask the beverage-control lobby to reconsider its cause and repeal this careless policy. I implore you, let our beverages flow freely -- or watch us wither away into social, intellectual and moral oblivion.