Ever since the Reidy family donated money to open up Common Grounds cafè in Simms Library in 2020, it has had a major effect on the aesthetic, cleanliness, and overall feel of the library. When the cafè opened for students, it invited many more of them into the library, creating a space for community on campus. Unfortunately, it also created many instances of disobedience, messes, and sound pollution. The library has become littered with food scraps, plastic wrappers, and drink cups, along with more noise disruption bleeding into the quiet wing of the library. The misbehavior has made our school library close off study rooms and the middle school reading room, reducing the capacity for after-school study in the designated quiet areas, and leading to it becoming a house of trash at times.
Typically, after the café closes, there are multiple food scraps and other trash strewn about the library. I found some 20 to 25 pieces of trash in a 20 to 25 foot radius of Common Grounds. Despite the best efforts from faculty to get students to chuck garbage in the trash, they have not been enough, and litter remains inside and outside the café for the custodians to remove. Naturally, adolescents usually are not very considerate of how they dispose of their trash – for example, even if there are “No Littering” signs in a public area, if there is no enforcement, they will still drop trash anyway. Anti-littering campaigns in the traditional form are rarely effective, especially with teenagers.
Disruptive behavior has been noticed in the café ever since a month after it opened. According to Mr. Keetso, one of the employees at Common Grounds, whenever there is misbehavior, it is usually people littering, the snack bar being trashed, the waiting line becoming disorderly, and seats not being pushed back in after people leave. A wide variety of students use the café, which means many are affected.
On certain days, Ms. Pirtle, a library assistant, mentioned that sometimes, the noise spills into the quiet wing of Simms Library. She says there was also “a lot of disrespect from [loud] students to the librarians.” She said that students treated the library as “a student union, entertainment center, and a whatever-they-want space” even with some of the patrons using the library properly. Ms. Glidden, the upper-school librarian, agrees with that statement as she removed a chess set from the library with not many pieces left, though she states that, “In this [social] space, it is okay for students to hang out, talk with friends, and, within reason, use the space as they like.”Along with the library and cafè staff, I have also witnessed the recurring chaos in the library and many examples of inappropriate library behavior coming from the introduction of Common Grounds.
The Common Grounds café has had an enormous impact on the Simms Library ever since it opened four years ago. Some of it has been positive, like encouraging some students to study in the library with a snack, but much of it has encouraged misbehavior in the library. Common Grounds has taken action on it to improve its environment, like a three-strikes system for misbehavior and a continued anti-littering campaign in the library. However, this is not enough, considering how much trash remains there after 4:30 P.M. Students must take more responsibility and need to be more careful with their scraps. The community has to do more to prevent the mess in the library. The solution to this is a collaborative one.
