VOL. XIII, NO. 4
NOVEMBER 12, 1971

Kathy Considers Open Campus
By KATHY WINCLECHTER

With all the controversy over Open Campus, has anyone stopped to consider the changes that would come about in various aspects of everyday school life? For example, what will become of that great institution the Maine West Library Resource Center?

If the privilege of leaving the campus or even the building is granted to a student, the library will no longer be a refuge for boring study halls. All festivity would come to a standstill. Para-professionals may be retired from their jobs as babysitters and re-assigned as full time library-aides. ID. punches could become extinct and brown cards could cease to exist. No longer would figures lurk around book shelves and patrol the reference area searching for outlaws of library regulations.
 The problem of discipline is not subject to any one group of students. Every class, whether senior or freshman, plays the same game of trying to bend the iron-clad "no talking!" rule. Aide from PAR and a half period of lunch, it is the only place for a student to see his friends and talk with them during the day. Underclassmen especially need this time to discuss academic as well as nonacademic ideas. Isn't high school a place to grow socially as well as mentally?

As it stands, the library trouble-makers and talkers infringe upon the rights of serious students. It is often the innocent who become the victims of the enforcement of the rules and not the offenders.

Open Campus would give the students a choice about where and how they would like to spend their time. They make that choice now regardless of the rules. Parents are reluctant to have the traditional walls torn down, but students need the freedom to decide how much they want to get out of their education.