By Julie Young,
Staff Writer

I’m inundated with information. Everywhere I walk, it seems that there is an out-dated club meeting sign obstructing my view of the nice clean wall.

I could complain about the design of the signs, but frankly, I’m no artist. However, I do object to small type and spelling errors. Small type is hard to read, and spelling errors are silly when one is only using 15 words.

In fact, I used to know a person who liked to correct errors on signs with a red pen. I’m not nearly that particular, but I do prefer words like “Cecilian” to be spelled correctly. I also enjoy the proper use of apostrophes. That’s not nearly my biggest issue with signs.

I hate it when the responsible parties don’t take them down once they expire. Since I’m an early eater on weekends, I often stand in front of the dining halldoors, waiting for them to open. This spot seems to attract the most signs per capita on campus. I can’t help but read them all, and note that the majority are past due. Where are their owners to take them down? No where to be seen. I admit that I’ve papered campus with various signs, but I like to think that I’ve taken most of them down when the event was over. Anyway, I end up ripping the signs down, and then I have to hunt for the paper recycling bin. On my hunt for the recycling bin (I usually head toward the Post Office), I come across other signs that need to be torn down. I rip them off the wall too, and by the time I hit the recycling bin, I have a fistful of signs that belong to clubs of which I am not a member.

Worse yet are the signs that have no ending date. They are the ones that announce that something is meeting “today.” Fantastic. Am I to remember what day the sign was hung? Should I carbon date it by reading the plentitude of signs that surround it to determine the week it was hung? You can always count on a sign to be hung around it too, if not directly over it.

Clearly, signs have this uncanny ability to mate and procreate over night. One day the wall by the Canevin steps will have a solitary sign hanging on it; the next day it will be littered with flyers. Maybe it was just lonely, and other clubs and organizations took pity on it by hanging little friends nearby.

Of course, if we cared so much for our signs that we didn’t want them to be lonely, we certainly wouldn’t murder them by hanging them on doors that lead outside.
See, it rains and snows in Pennsylvania. Precipitation gets on the signs and runs the ink, rendering them completely illegible, giving people good excuses to miss meetings.

Also, there is really no need to look at bulletin boards anymore. Nothing will actually be on them, as everyone is too busy taping their signs to the wall, using copious amounts of sticky tape.

One would think we were trying to get the tape company to sponsor the big pile of dirt that we lovingly call the “recreation complex” simply by using an excess of their product.

However, this doesn’t solve the signage problem. Frankly, the hallways are beginning to look sloppy. But it could just be that I haven’t had a spare moment to rip down signs. What should we do about this sign problem? Well, we could ban sticky tape. That way, no one would be able to attach signs to areas not covered in cork.

However, that would spoil our lucrative funding agreement with the tape company. Of course, the push pin and staple company could possibly give us more money toward the dirt pile than the tape company.

Of course, I’m overlooking the obvious. The problem isn’t the tape, it’s the paper. Whatever happened to the dream of a paperless society? Maybe we should take action to make it happen.

The next time there’s a club meeting, just email me.

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