This is a guest column by John Miller.
Have you ever been walking through campus on an average, bitter-cold winter day, found yourself stopped in your tracks by a crowd and asked yourself — cursing — why you were forced to a full stop on your way to class?
If you’re like most people on campus, this thought might be followed by a curious roving of the eyes to find out what the holdup is. Then there will be a recognition that what is causing the full stop is not some sort of horrible accident or a crime scene but is in fact a perfectly benign congregation of students around a booth, a public speaker or someone playing music.
When this happens, it’s easy to allow one’s surprise to transform into annoyance and then into indignation, but if one pushes away those unpleasant knee-jerk reactions, one realizes the wealth of strange and fascinating obstructions Georgia State has on its well-worn and labyrinthine pathways.
Any student reading this will recognize the hip-hop music that plays outside of the library every Tuesday morning like clockwork and some will recall with chagrin, but others will marvel at how deftly the musicians succeed in attracting a crowd.
Nearby, there is the lone evangelist armed with megaphone and picket sign, delivering grim messages to passers-by about the unfortunate fates their souls might have. Readers will recall the ubiquity of this man’s voice echoing through Courtland Street and some will take a moment to think, regardless of whether they agree with him or not, that kind of tireless routine takes immense dedication.
Then, patrons of the library will sigh to recall the experience of walking through the aisles in search of a book and having to step over an exhausted student taking a nap amongst the Greek mythology. Or perhaps they’ll recall walking through the third floor of the library in search of a place to read said book and finding not one single available chair on the entire floor, forcing oneself to continue the search on the fourth floor.
Perhaps students who don’t darken those corners of campus so often might brighten at the mention of the renegade cowbell musician near Aderhold. He just seems to have the supernatural ability to play the exact same tempo on the exact same instrument for hours on end, never once tiring of or straying from his syncopated rhythm.
Yes, Georgia State’s campus is a place of fascinating, attention-grabbing happenings, not one of which is inherently bad or good but rather open to the subjective interpretation of the person experiencing them.
Perhaps these phenomena are not so much obstructions or distractions as much as they are totems of the institution of education itself, serving as puzzling and unique eddies in the tide that directs us toward the higher knowledge we are all here to acquire. After all, there is a reason that we come here in the flesh: to see and to be seen.
