Imagine needing to study, but feeling too cramped in your room, too oppressed in the library, and too distracted in the eerie quiet of an empty classroom. Then you realize the perfect place to study: A.J.’s Café. You arrive, order some food, plop your books onto a table, and prepare to get everything done.
Then someone starts playing the piano. Your night is ruined.
Hillsdale College should get rid of the piano in A.J.’s Café. If it won’t do that, then it should at least make the piano less accessible. There are few things more annoying than trying to study, converse with a friend, or enjoy some food that isn’t from Saga, only to have yet another Five for Fighting song assault your eardrums.
There’s simply no excuse for playing that piano except during special musical events like Coffeehouse. If someone needs to practice, the Howard Music Building is full of pianos. If they think they’re doing a service to the denizens of A.J.’s, newsflash: no one comes to A.J.’s to hear sappy pop ballads. The sudden onslaught of four repeated chords just annoys everyone in earshot.
Clearly, a growing multitude of Hillsdale students are fed up with the surprise serenades. Students are stressed enough by papers and exams. Annoying them in one of their few refuges may just push them over the edge. Hillsdale College must act before the oppressed classes take matters into their own hands.
Revolution already stirs among the student body. Last semester on a November evening, a piece of paper rested on the A.J.’s piano’s lid. It read: “Out of order. And I don’t mean the piano.” Last Saturday, the piano was gone entirely. In its place was a note reading: “For your A.J.’s convenience the piano has been relocated to the Formal Lounge. Thank you, people studying in A.J.’s.” When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a student body to dissolve the annoyance that has aggravated them, it is the right of the students to alter or abolish it.
Besides, we all know those guys are just trying to impress girls anyway.
