One of my favorite parts of the UMass campus is the library and its surrounding area. This love of mine is in no small part owed to the flowers that have been planted around the base of the gargantuan tower of books.
I don't know about you, but I literally stop and smell the flowers. I might be the only one. I might look like a dork. But some of them smell really beautiful. Try it. It might help you decrease your stress as you run from class to class, while attempting to do homework in between.
The library also exudes a sense of community. Even when just walking by the benches that surround the flower beds, one can spot names of those who donated those benches in honor or memory of someone else.
This act of donation provides us students with a link between the past and present. Thinking about the hard work that others have put into creating our society - even if we don't actually know the person whose name is etched on the bench.
Connecting others' past work to our present is a way to appreciate our past, strengthen our present, and make an even more glorious future. Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of the 20th century and spirited Zionist and Jewish leader, once commented that when he realizes how hard those who have come before him have worked for what we have now, he understands that he owes it to them to continue their work. I find this notion to be especially inspiring.
If one follows this line of reasoning, then one can hope for a similar state of mind that led Oprah, Her Highness the demi-god, to exclaim, "When I look into the future, it's so bright it burns my eyes." (I don't mean to be sarcastic about Oprah; I admire her.)
Once you've passed the flower beds and the benches, you can enter the library and go down one floor to the Learning Commons. Here is where I truly feel a sense of community. The area is lively (as lively as a library should be), with students constantly teeming in and out.
A society should be judged by what her inhabitants hold to be important. Judging by the amount of time UMass students spend in the pursuit of knowledge, the realm of ideas, and the application of learning to practical solutions, it seems that we are a community dedicated to enhancing the future.
I'm glad we don't just play video games all day long. Imagine if W.E.B. DuBois spent all day playing video games. We wouldn't have a library named after this man. I know, I know, DuBois has a lot more to his name than just a library. He was a great voice for racial equality. But if we all get lazy, we won't have anything to show for it.
The fact that so many students spend time at the library would also make Judah Ibn Tibbon, the 12th century Jewish poet from Granada, Spain, proud. He advised, "Make books your treasures and bookshelves your gardens of delight." I found this quote on the wrapping of a book I received from the Birthright Israel program, after I visited that pioneering country, and I just thought it was deliciously true. It is nice to study among the works that other scholars have created.
As Barbara Streisand, my own personal favorite, sings in the movie Yentl (as she is admitted to a yeshiva, a Jewish center of learning), "I can walk through the forests / Of the trees of knowledge… I can enter rooms / Where there are rooms within rooms / Wrapped in the shawl that learning weaves… I can open doors and take from the shelves / All the books I've longed to hold / I can ask all the questions / The whys and the wheres / As the mysteries of life unfold…"
To know that the UMass community is heeding the advice of Albert Einstein, Oprah Winfrey, Judah Ibn Tibbon and Barbra Streisand should say a lot about our character. We should all be proud.
Now for the next challenge: get some architecture students to build a library that is pleasing to the eye.
Matt Hoffman is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at mjhoffma@student.umass.edu.
Be the first to comment on this article!