Clemons cliques create club culture

Around mid-October, a slump spreads through the University. Class attendance drops. Students are more intent on the "Wonderword" than on note taking. Women file their nails in the middle of lecture (yes, I actually saw that happen the other day).

Meanwhile, professors silently endure these offenses, until one day they simply can endure no more. They unleash their time-tested ammunition that instills fear in the listless beings inhabiting their classrooms. I'm talking about the midterm, or the research paper or the project. Each professor has his or her weapon of choice, and none of them are afraid to use it.

After kidding myself for the first month of school that I could actually get work done in my apartment, I decided that the only way to keep my GPA above water was to head to the library.

Thanks to these fun and festive budget cuts (the ones also responsible for my not being able to print anything without being number 457 in the queue), Alderman was closing at 10 p.m. on weekdays. And like most people, that's when I'm just getting warmed up.

So I found myself faced with no other choice than to overlook my aversion to burnt-umber orange carpeting and head to the exclusive Club Clemons.

Everyone's favorite architectural anomaly has become the second home for a significant number of students, including myself, as we attempt to weather these late-October academic storms. And in the countless hours I've spent lurking about the premises lately, I've made quite an interesting sociological discovery: Clemons really is a club!

So there's no velvet rope outside, no line stretching all the way to McCormick Road. But don't let the lack of outer trappings fool you. While this club might let everyone in the building, once you're inside, it's clique central.

Clubs have their various subsets of patrons: the dancers, the barflies, the flirts and the wallflowers. And at Clemons, you'll find that most patrons fall into a category that they themselves have probably never realized exist:

The library-dwellers

The most easily-identified of all the groups at Clemons, library-dwellers have massive stashes of Pav-purchased sweets piled on their table, always remain in groups of at least four (so they can make sure nobody escapes, I'm sure), and can instantaneously fall asleep curled up in a bed made of two cushioned chairs pushed together.

I wouldn't be surprised if members of this group also have a change of clothes stashed away in their overloaded backpacks. While their meals consist of cafeteria take-out, I wonder why they haven't just taken to bringing canned food and Sterno stoves so that they'd never, ever have to leave.

The wanderers

He's standing at the circulation desk as you walk in, roaming around the copy machines as you stop to check your e-mail, and heading into the media center as you continue down to the first floor. After an hour you get up to get some water, and he's coming out of the elevator. Later he's chatting with someone at a nearby table. There are plenty of people who come to Clemons and manage to do just about everything

that is, except study. All I've been able to conclude about wanderers is that quite often, they wear camouflage hats.

The fixtures

Like the wanderers, fixtures haunt Clemons for hours on end, but are never actually caught cracking a book. Instead, fixtures park themselves in a strategically located spot (the chairs by the fourth floor entrance is a particularly coveted locale). For the remainder of their library stint, they proceed to coolly size up everyone who walks in the door, strike up lame conversations with passers-by they happen to know, or attempt do both of the above while yakking on their cell phones. I can see how sizing people up in a real club might be somewhat interesting, but this is the library, for crying out loud. Shouldn't we be allowed to look like hell without getting a snide glance?

The fanatical Comm School group

Being more of an Arts & Sciences type of girl, I'm not too familiar with the inner dynamics of Commerce School groups. But as a Clemons patron, I can tell you that the majority of the tables on the fourth floor are inhabited by these die-hard CEOs-to-be. When you see four people at a table who look like they normally wouldn't be caught dead hanging out with each other, you've just spotted a Comm group. But I have to give them credit -- at least you can tell they're actually doing work.

Mr. Earplugs Guy

We've all seen the "quiet zone" signs that greet you as you enter the first floor of Clemons. Cell phone ringing aside, I'd say that for the most part, people are pretty good at adhering to this standard. Sure you have your occasional rustling of papers or opening of a soda, but those are distractions we can easily tune out, right? Well, apparently Mr. Earplugs Guy has trouble doing so, because the other day when I was plugging in my laptop, he gave me a nasty look and moved over to the next carrel. The scary thing is that I'm sure he's not alone in his edginess. There are plenty of other quiet fanatics lurking about Clemons. Thank goodness I've only seen one who uses earplugs.

Clemons might not be host to a glowstick-toting, martini-sipping clientele you'd be likely to find at a real club. However, for reasons I simply cannot discern, Club Clemons is arguably the most popular library to hibernate in during this flurry of work. Maybe it's because of the late hours or the retro decor. But most likely, it's because they don't ID before midnight.