Faith Talamantez / The Daily Nexus
It is common knowledge that the top three floors of UC Santa Barbara’s Library, numbering floors six through eight, are the quiet floors, where speaking or making any sort of noise above slightly aggressive typing is strictly prohibited. And yet, there has been a huge rise in the number of students at UCSB who have begun to violate these sacred tenets of the library.
Many students have actually been participating in Zoom calls while on the quiet floors, disturbing the other patrons around them. Some other students conducted a series of prank calls conducting a study on whether people talk in the library, and there was even one student who brought their electric guitar to the eighth floor to practice for their audition.
“I mean, I was just appalled,” Miriam Goldmann, a first-year biopsychology major confessed. “I was just sitting there trying to finish my Papa’s Pizzeria game (I’m at rank 31, by the way), and then all of a sudden, some yob sat down with his computer and started yapping about some witch trial or something. The violence with which he disturbed the peace completely ruined my game performance — my pizza literally burned.”
When asked why she didn’t tell him to leave, Miriam was scandalized: “It’s the quiet floor. You’re not supposed to talk, PERIOD.”
Another student, Arnold Rupert, a third-year physics major, didn’t have any qualms about speaking on the quiet floor, but he ran into another set of problems.
“It would’ve been comedic, if it hadn’t been such an annoying situation. So, basically, I was in the middle of a series of incredibly complex calculations, and I was just about to have a breakthrough when someone started talking on a Zoom call. I think it was a job interview? Anyway, I was super pissed because it’s the eighth floor. Like, they don’t put that aggressively large ‘quiet floor’ sign up for decoration purposes only.”
“So, I stood up, and went up to this guy — he looked like a massive tool as well — and was like, ‘Sorry, do you mind doing your call somewhere else?’ And he had the nerve to look at me all disgusted, and then he literally said, ‘I’m kinda busy right now. And this is the quiet floor, so that means you can’t really talk to me.’ Who the hell does this guy think he is?”
To get the other side of the story, this reporter tracked down a number of students who were responsible for these violations. Sarah Trumbly, a second-year communication major, was one such figure, although she didn’t seem very remorseful about her actions: “I work better when I listen to music, but it can’t be through headphones, it has to be out in the open — the sound waves are more conducive to my focus that way. The seventh floor is especially perfect for me because no one talks so nothing disturbs my work or my music.”
A student who wishes to remain anonymous knew exactly who Sarah Trumbly was and had a few choice words they wished to impart to her: “I hope she gets pelted with a piece of bark by an angry squirrel. Or I’ll slip a tip to CALPIRG saying she’s given money to a group that wants to cut down the old-growth forest. That’ll teach her a lesson.”
Sawyer Thurston, a third-year anthropology and art history double major weighed in, saying, “I don’t go to the library anymore. I kept getting things thrown at me, for like, no reason at all. First it was a balled up piece of paper that said, ‘Shut up.’ And then it was a banana, then it was a shoe and then it was a full Hydro Flask water bottle. All I wanted to do was play my guitar in peace on the sixth floor. Is that so bad?”
The library has faced many threats regarding their lack of response to students who choose to not be quiet on the quiet floors. They maintain that they aren’t able to intervene, as they can’t violate the no talking rules. Sunny Ginsburg, a first-year history and English double major, had this to say in response: “That’s literally so stupid.”
Serrano Ham thinks that people who keep sniffing their runny noses on the quiet floors should have their face on “wanted” posters.
