Partly Cloudy, 64°
It should have been a routine visit to the Rock for Timothy Seltzer '12, who planned to do some Chem 33 reading, check if he'd been invited to any new Facebook events, and maybe sprint through the stacks pretending that a headless monster was chasing him through the darkness.
But just as Seltzer ensconced himself in a fourth-floor carrel with a pleasing view of the Quiet Green, he was approached by Matilda Lint GS. Lint informed him that the carrel was her own, as evidenced by its pile of books pertaining to her dissertation topic, the psychoanalytic basis for gendered violence in the portrayal of nature throughout medieval Japanese literature.
When Seltzer refused to give up his seat, Lint grew angry and demanded that he "go back to the Frisc where you belong! You're on our turf now."
"You don't own these stacks!" shot back Seltzer.
"There's only one way to settle this," Lint responded, her eyes blazing with the intensity of a thousand suns. "On the floor."
"You sure you want to do that?" asked Seltzer coolly, as the opening notes of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" came to a crescendo.
"I just hope you brought your dancing shoes," Lint replied fiercely, as she did a jazz run to the elevator. Seltzer moonwalked after her.
Seconds later, they skipped out of the elevator and into the main reading room, where their fellow students flanked them. The college students grapevined behind Seltzer and the graduates did toe touches behind Lint.
"That carrel is mine," hissed Lint as she shimmied self-righteously. "I was sitting there while you were still doing high school algebra in Mommy's kitchen."
"Where would we be today if Rosa Parks had given up her seat to a snotty grad student?" Seltzer asked, busting out a Running Man.
Gradually, the pack of college students advanced on the graduates, snapping their fingers with each step. The graduate students responded by twirling each other and doing grand jetés over armchairs. "You're the reason I had to take Bio 20 twice!" shrieked one sophomore, pirouetting ferociously around his former teaching assistant.
Brown has an extensive, though largely undocumented, tradition of library dance rumbles. The most recent was a 1983 conflict that broke out between science and history concentrators after Marcus Evey '84 attempted to re-shelve a book on his own, rather than place it in one of the designated wheeled carts.
At press time, the outcome of the current fracas remains uncertain. It is highly probable, however, that Lint and Seltzer will fall in love, fail to resolve the conflict between their peer groups, and perish tragically before the Rock closes at 2 a.m.
