Seems to me that there might have been a better way to handle this.
Librarians don’t make shit, and basically the only reason to be a librarian is because you believe in what libraries stand for.
If they’re closing during those hours, they probably genuinely don’t think they have a choice.
The move came after a year in which library staff complained about rampant misbehavior among rowdy teenagers at the library, Strezo said, including reports of teens lighting firecrackers, getting into fights, and disturbing peers who had come to study or relax after a long day at school.
There is a better way: parents can teach their kids fucking manners. Clearly some of them know how to behave in public, so why are the rest being such little shits?
I disagree. Setting aside my feelings on the policy, a behavior occurred, a policy was enacted, a behavior was changed. Making it objectively a policy issue.
Your desire for it not to be a policy issue seems to be the driving factor for why you don’t think it’s a policy issue. Seems like circular reasoning.
Maybe I’m missing something though, I’m open to elaboration on why curtailing misbehavior on public grounds with a policy is not a policy issue.
Strezo said librarians had asked for more staff and better security measures, but haven’t gotten either.
Another group, much like educators, failed by our shit society.
I’m willing to bet that if I had rolled into a library and started tossing firecrackers around, I would have been arrested. There is a problem with petty crime on public property; why is there not a police presence? The reason the assholes keep doing this is because they don’t experience any consequences, and just closing the doors isn’t a consequence.
That would be the reactionary part of an appropriate solution. The preventative part would be to only allow library access to people over 18 with ID (at least during the hours they’ve instead decided to close the doors to everyone), unless accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
In general librarians are looking out for their communities the best they can with the meager resources provided. Libraries barely get funding to keep in books, much less security guards and lawyers. Who would enforce the age gating? Maybe it’s an acab type of town, and closing the library for a spell is safer than calling the police. From the article they planned to put cameras in the library, which would help find-out come home to it’s fuck-around.
