VOL. XXII, NO. 8
MARCH 27, 1981

Editorial II
Destruction of Library Needs Explaining
Vandalism is just a term until it affects you. It's something that happens to other people - until it hits you.

Maine West used to be free of all the major damage reported on the evening news. Of course, we had graffitti in the washrooms and an occasional broken window, but that damage was basically minor. The early morning of Mar. 15, however, changed our record.

Many students did not know anything happened until school opened on Monday. The library and stage were hit, but all the average student saw were boards on the LRC windows. The damage covered the entire LRC area. Glass, shattered and splattered throughout the library, lay beneath what were once windows to the world. A telephone lay under a desk, its insides exposed better than any repairman could ever make them be seen. A model of the earth paused abandoned in the Rotary Reading Room,		 looking as pitiful and irreparably damaged as the rest of the LRC. Librarians and English teachers sat in the LRC that day surrounded by little piles of cards, trying to put order back into the card catalog and the daily routine. A janitor ran a noisy vacuum cleaner, sucking up the severed remains of broken glass and broken reputation.

The description may seem dramatic but that is exactly how the library appeared to us as we were shown through it the first school day after the damage occurred. The most inconceivable fact in this horrid case of destruction is a Maine West student or students might have done the deed. How can anyone have so much disrespect for our school? What could anyone hope to prove by depriving the students and the staff of an important facility like the LRC or trying to ruin the costumes and scenery for the musical, less than one week before its first performance? No matter who vandalized the building, we still would like to know why.