Seeing as you’re reading The Sun right now, there’s a good chance you’re in Libe Café. If you’re in Libe Café, there’s a good chance you’ve brought readings to do for class. Since you’re reading my column, there’s a very good chance you’re not doing your readings.
Look around though — I’ll bet a full 65 percent of Libe Café is also not reading.
(I’m waiting while you look around.)
See, plenty of other people are looking around at each other as well. Maybe it’s because they’re all at exactly the same point in my column. More likely, it’s because Libe Café is a cauldron of sexual tension. People convince themselves they’re going there to do work, while their real motives are less academic than aesthetic. If you need to get work done, you stake out in the A.D. White room. If you’re in the market for eye contact, you go to Libe Café. The end result is that everyone becomes enraptured in this pseudo-conscious, passive-aggressive sexual sparring whereby gender norms are produced and reinforced by our study habits. You know what I mean? OK sorry — here’s how it works:
Walk into Olin Library. You can turn right and get work done or turn left and go into Libe Café. Left is clearly the only viable option at this point.
Grab a Sun or a Times. Get in line for coffee, not because you want coffee but because the coffee line puts you in the best vantage point. Spend 10 seconds looking around the room. Triangulate the exact distance, in centimeters, between the available seats and the hottest people pretending to do reading.
Stand in line for 45 seconds, at which point you realize that you don’t actually want coffee. In fact, you’re still holding half a cup from when you bought coffee an hour ago, right before your last class. By the way you kinda look like an idiot trying to open up the newspaper while holding a cup of coffee.
Ditch the line and find a seat. On the way, interrupt any friends who are also there pretending to do reading. Sit down. Look around while you’re taking out a book. Notice the Sun columnists sitting around, watching to see if people are reading their columns. There are at least two Sun columnists in Libe Café at any given moment — usually some combination of Elana, Olivia and Fishman. Shit I’m probably on that list too. Also it’s actually a myth that Sun columnists are real students who have classes and stuff — we actually only write our columns and hang out in the non-quiet areas of the libraries. We can afford to do this because The Sun has us on handsome salaries. (Oh, sorry Jenna you’re not salaried? Oh … awkward …).
Open up your book. Alternate between reading and looking at every other person that walks in the door, grabs a paper and gets in the coffee line for 45 seconds. By this time you have the demographics of the Café pretty much memorized. Keep this up for 15 minutes, then peace out to go check your e-mail.
My point is twofold.
First, how many times have you convinced yourself you’re going to the library to do work when you really just crave social contact and are intoxicated with the prospect of meeting someone good looking? Compare that to the number of times you’ve actually ended up dating someone you’ve met at the library. I’ll bet the ratio is not encouraging. Or maybe I’m just not fluent in the discourse of library-eyes. (Um, my e-mail is usually at the bottom of the column if you have any pointers …)
Second — and I am being more serious here — I think the gendering of Cornell’s social space has profound impact on the gendering of academics. By “gendering of social space,” I mean the above process by which Cornell’s public sphere (a.k.a places like Libe Café, the Arts Quad) becomes attached to heightened awareness of gender. Gender is cemented in both our memories and current observations of Libe Café, leading to what I would call a gendered understanding of the space. This inscription of gender into our understanding of Libe Café sets the framework for that which takes place within this arena, influencing the incredibly unbalanced gender divisions between academic disciplines (let alone the much remarked upon gender divisions among Sun columns, which exist even more resolutely in the heart of Cornell’s public sphere).
Facebook is also instrumental in this process. As the epitome of “public space,” Facebook launches the academic identities we construct for ourselves into the public consciousness. As we are aware of this exposure from the start, we cultivate our academic identities so that they will be coherent with our gendered ones.
Take the Government thesis class for example — it has 20 male and 4 female students. Where did the women go? Check Fine Arts, which last year had a thesis class of 25 females and 3 guys. Do you think this has an impact on how many men and women from Cornell will end up holding public office? Although part of the gaping lack of female U.S. senators (there are 16 at the moment) can be explained by the media’s tendency toward sexualized campaign coverage, a lot of this gender gap is surely rooted in academic socialization. In libraries and in section alike, we study in areas that are highly gendered, meaning that when our minds are academically engaged they are also very much attuned to gender norms. The two become irreconcilably conflated, and we identify through both at the same time. My identity as a straight male is reinforced by my identity as a Government major, and vice versa. The mediating agent for this process of conflation is, in large part, the public space within which we stake out these identities.
The only way to move past this counterproductive gendering of academic disciplines is to nuke Libe Café.
I’m kidding — but you guys are smart; try to recognize how silly the sexual politics of our library system are, and try to create a course schedule that isn’t dictated by gender.
Tim Krueger is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at tkrueger@cornellsun.com. Educating Your Guesses appears alternate Thursdays.