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When I was your age, there was a water fountain in front of Jafet

by Mohammad Hijazi
Many students have been surprised after they were welcomed back from the inter-semester break by the decision of the university to remove the water fountain that was situated in front of Jafet Library and turn that space into a mini-garden which some students are starting to refer to as "the mini-zoo", especially in reference to the abundance of cats in that area.

What makes this issue more interesting, however, is that a biology student at AUB has created a memorial page on the social networking site Facebook, which has attracted 700 members so far, many of who complained that they have never seen the water fountain operating during their enrollment in AUB, while others remember that week last May when it was fully shining and operating during the President's Inauguration ceremony.

Some students speculated that the university had made this decision to make the AUB camper greener, while others think that they are trying to cut their water and electricity bills. Interestingly enough, one students attributes this removal to the tragic death of an AUB cat due to drowning, which is a reason why some cat-haters wished that the fountain has operated more often. Yet, the real reason for this decison by the administration is still not clear.

Most fans of this memorial page, which is called "When I was your age, there was a water fountain in front of Jafet" have expressed their approval of removing the fountain since it was rarely operating, and was just there collecting dust and attracting cats during mating season. They appreciate the "olive trees" and the colorful "onion flowers," as they called them. Others, however, are begging for the fountain back claiming that the soil will become cat litter soon and the smell will repel students from that area.

The removal of such a fountain hadn't been the first in AUB, as a Med I student points out on that page, for there was a similar fountain in front of the main Cafeteria but was removed to be replaced by empty space, and recently by a Faqra Catering kiosk.

Some hilarious comments about this issue include: "the tree and the small onion plants resemble a Greek battle field for the cats in their mating season," "When you will be my age, CATS will be lecturing instead of professors," and "shirbouha lbarrishe [the nerds drank it all]". One particular student stated that it's part of a bigger green project by AUB. "They want to plant trees everywhere,"  he said.

A huge chunk of students, though, could not care less about this change. Some of them do not come to that part of campus while others think that there are much more important topics that are worthy of discussion, such as the yearly tuition increase. Yet, the great number of fans this page has attracted is probably because many students wanted to vent their frustration out or because they felt that they can relate to this simple change.

Comments

  1. a biology student? do they have time for that? i wonder who that person is ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. lol heba! we know its you who created the page :P

    ReplyDelete

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