Sike! Milne Library closing for continued construction
Photo courtesy of Photo Editor, Faith Zatlukal
Did you like having a library to study in and live out your cool girl dreams? Too bad!
After its soft opening on Nov. 7, 2024, Milne Library will be shutting its doors for continued construction. Though no exact reason has been given yet for the sudden reclosure, students are encouraged to retake their former study spots in the MacVittie College Union by any means necessary.
Though it may seem to SUNY Geneseo students that after 40 million dollars and almost five years of construction, the library should be in pristine working order for students, staff, and faculty, multiple rumors have resurfaced regarding the reasoning behind Milne's reclosure.
The most prolific rumor is that the reclosure is due to the administration feeling it was unfair to senior-year students to tease them with an actual library during their college career. Critics of this reasoning point out that this creates a sort of cycle, where each incoming senior class will also be a senior class that has never had an actual library, but what these people fail to understand is that rising seniors will have had the opportunity for a real, actual library, whereas current seniors did not.
This distinction is key, as it creates just enough of a shadow of logic to make it seem as though there is not some larger plan for Milne. This has caused many to accept this idea as the truth, but a smaller grouping of students think they have discovered a larger truth.
A group known as the “Squirrel Squatter Scholars” claim they have seen construction workers in the early morning (9:00 am) carrying gorged burlap sacks. Due to the observations of this group, they have bore witness to these sacks dropping acorns out of overextended seams. This and the recent decreased spotting of squirrels on-campus means that there must be a secret squirrel colony inside Milne Library.
In inquiries initiated from the Scholars and passed down to The normaL from an anonymous tipster, testimonies from library staff speak on the topic of an increased “musty smell” inside the Teacher Education Resource Center (TERC) on the first floor. This notation, combined with the observation of the construction workers entering through the first-floor doors, can only mean that hiding somewhere between the musical instruments, manipulatives, and puppets must be a host of hungry squirrels riding out the winter.
Critics of the Squirrel Squatter Scholars would rush to point out that the mustier smell might be due to it being a room much smaller than many of the others in the library, full of books of various ages, but they would be wrong. These individuals fail to discredit the witnessing of the construction workers. How are we then to explain those away? The reasonable conclusion now becomes that the Milne Library is closing in order to be re-renovated into an integrative library and a squirrel sanctuary.
This alteration will create a major pull for Geneseo, as it will be the only of its kind. Scholars believe this is part of the administration’s recent strategy for increasing student enrollment while also giving cause for an increase in tuition pay.
Though some would doubt this theory, any careful observer of the Geneseo campus would notice an increase in the number of crows spotted outside where it seems squirrels used to be. This can only be because all the Geneseo squirrels are preparing for their new life as part of the re-renovation of the Milne Library. The Scholars estimate this project to ultimately cost SUNY Geneseo 900 gazillion dollars alongside the aspirations of generations of depressed college students while estimating renovations to take approximately one millennium to complete.