University Star

Life has its ups and downs. Students spend a considerable amount of time in the Alkek Library. As a result, readers should be familiar with unpredictable elevators.

Too much time spent standing and waiting for the elevator to arrive so as to avoid taking the dreaded staircase. When the long awaited elevator does arrive there is another wait spent as its occupants spill out. They seem as if their textbooks and Mac computers have sucked the life out of them like unresponsive drones.

I often use the Alkek elevators. I even, on occasion, run to catch an open elevator. When this occurs there is a kind person there to hold the doors open for me. But every once in a while, the person inside just watches when I arrive panting and wide-eyed as the doors close in my face.

Every time this happens, a small piece of my soul dies. Am I alone in my sentiments?

These elevator miscreants and their inability to extend a kind arm to allow me passage onto the sacred elevators are one of two things. Either they are simply jerks on a bad day, taking their misery out on my need for elevation, or maybe they are the manifestation of the tragic down fall of humanity.

I know what the Jean-Paul Sartre existentialists are thinking. People will do what they will … we have no predetermined purpose. A civilized society is one where people extend certain courtesies to others, like holding an elevator door open.

It is what defines our humanity and separates us from the animals.

John Locke in all his infinite enlightenment would probably agree with me. Locke claimed minds were blank slates at the beginning of time. Before society existed we dwelled in a state of nature where our cave-people ancestors were constantly breaking into each other’s caves, stealing their twigs and stones and probably letting elevators slam in each other’s faces.

Locke was correct that a society is necessary to protect mankind, his property and his need to get to the sixth floor.

As a solution to the primitive state of nature taking over the Alkek elevator banks, I suggest Texas State existentialists take advantage of the power of personal responsibility and contribute to the society of the university by holding the elevator doors. I promise not to tell the rest of your Sartre fan club.

Returning to my aforementioned question. Are these elevator miscreants contributing to the downfall of humanity? Who is to say? All I know is, the next time some proud, responsible person extends a kind arm to hold the door, the sun will shine down on Texas State a little brighter.

— Annie Schultz is an English freshman