When I was the Ego editor way back in the fall of 2007, my co-editor Chloé and I came up with a slew of questions that we routinely asked our Egos of the Week. One of those questions was, “There are two types of people at Penn, those who ____ and those who ____.” The answers to this question ranged from wildly amusing to mildly offensive, but they always struck me as quite apt. Maybe it’s not fair to classify students at this fine institution this way. Maybe it’s even unnecessarily divisive. Regardless, I contend that there are two types of people at Penn: those who love Fisher Fine Arts Library and those who do not.
With midterm season upon us, you may think this is a distinction based solely on study spot preference. You, my friend, would be wrong. There is a fundamental difference between those who prefer the Ivy League grandness of FFA (what I affectionately call my beloved library) over the artificial blandness of Van Pelt or — horror of horrors — Huntsman.
Sure, it’s pretty quiet. And a former Street editor/FFA employee informed me that he has caught some homely grad students doing the nasty in the stacks on occasion. But how can anyone deny the awesomeness that is Fisher Fine Arts? Four-story high ceilings, skylights, Victorian detailing: FFA is epic. That’s not to say that those who eschew said epicness in favor of Rosenparty or the Death Star are lame, but diehard FFAers are inherently cooler. They just are.
They appreciate the collegiate charm of Furness’s masterpiece — fireplaces, winding staircases and all. They’re the kind of kids who keep tabs on Morrissey (see pg. 14), not Madoff. They know about Lomography (pg. 16), not leveraged buyouts. In my opinion, the one thing that FFA is missing is hourly dance breaks. But even that came to semi-fruition during the glorious flash mob incident of fall reading days ’08. Yes, Fisher Fine Arts is epic. And the perfect place to cozy up and read Street.
Allay the good precedence, Julia
