Suggested Reading

Suggestion boxes abound around the campus. While they demonstrate a commendable willingness on the part of different College offices to heed the occasionally helpful criticisms of students, the correspondence with one exception is lacking in all but the most mundane interest. At Thayer dining hall, for example, a document (with each remark and reply numbered) is posted weekly on the bulletin board in the lobby. The table, as it were, is set too formally for the occasion. There are no grease stains, no smudges on the pages. With no evidence of even a brief passage through the kitchen, who could believe the suggestions have been noted by the cooks? The comments themselves are unappetizing complaints about underand over-cooked vegetables, supposedly hard-boiled eggs that turn out runny, about the beef Burgundy, the hours when meals are served, and about pushing and shoving in the lines. The answers are worse. They're stale, having more of the musty odor of the administrator's office about them than the aroma of cookery. The sensible request for Tabasco sauce at breakfast and red peppers with dinner, for instance, elicited only a tepid "we'll see."

Hoping for something spicier from the Student Health Service office at Dick's House notes about contagion in the classrooms or vermin in fraternity basements, perhaps we were disappointed to discover that suggestions and replies in that department are kept under wraps. Confidential answers are sent to a student's mail box. After making a quick assault on the Kiewit Computation Center, where a format for suggestions is reputed to exist, we failed to recognize anything that resembled an old-fashioned suggestion box and concluded that gripes about the computer require a session at a terminal.

In Baker Library, however, at the west entrance to the Reserve Room, there is a bona fide box for suggestions and two bulletin boards where dozens of suggestions, questions, comments, and replies are posted. The handwritten notes, scrawled on blue slips of paper, show the critical student mind at work." And the answers short, informative, understandable, and willing to explore any subject show the resources of the library at their best. Here is a sampling:

STUDENT: "In the interest of equality, and in light of the magazine's upcoming Ivy League issue reportedly featuring men at Dartmouth, is there any chance of Baker subscribing not only to Playboy but to Playgirl as well?"

LIBRARY: "We do subscribe to Playgirl. Ask at Circulation."

STUDENT: "If you're going to have Playboy, why not also Penthouse?"

LIBRARY: "One example of the genre seems sufficient."

STUDENT: "These paintings in the Reserve Room are extremely distracting, especially now that I know a little history behind the artist. Any chance of paneling them over like the Hovey Grill paintings were?"

LIBRARY: "NO. Look the other way."

STUDENT: "A light in a study carrel on the fifth floor has been out for two weeks and needs replacing." LIBRARY: "Done."

STUDENT: "Just about everywhere I look in the library I see a portrait of Daniel Webster or his wife. Just how many are there?"

LIBRARY: "Enough."

STUDENT: "Why was the little room under the stairs recently painted? Will it be used for something? And what is in the space under the stairs accessible only through the narrow trap door of said little room?"

LIBRARY: "The little room is now used as a 'persuasion room' for delinquent or otherwise recalcitrant patrons. We don't think you really want to know the answer to your last question."

STUDENT: "When will we see this mysterious question-answerer?"

LIBRARY: "Every Sunday morning at sunrise."

STUDENT: "Just who are you anyway?" LIBRARY: "We."

LIBRARY SUGGESTION BOX

Contributors to Baker's suggestion box are rewarded with reasons why. And why not.