Ayeyi Aboagye
Staff Writer
Illustration by Napatr Pumhiran
So there you were. Fervently reading your textbook, trying desperately to cram for the next day’s midterm when you heard it. The blaring sounds of this week’s top hits drowning out the softer, more study-friendly tunes you had playing from your earphones. With no one else to blame but the lovely people over at AkooTV, you join in with the other disgruntled University of California Santa Barbara students and sign the petition to have Akoo removed entirely from the UCen. Apparently, for 189 UCSB students, this was exactly the case.
Undoubtedly, these bright and obnoxious television screens can prove to be quite the distraction when trying to get work done in the UCen, but the bigger issue lies with these students themselves.
Why would you flock to the UCen if you had serious studying to get through? I may be mistaken, but to the best extent of my knowledge, the UCen and Davidson Library are two entirely different entities.
The UCen was not designed as an educational facility, but over the years, the students have turned it into such a place. Stroll through at any time of day and you will most likely find an array of bodies sprawled across its many couches. I myself have taken to the UCen on numerous occasions to get work done when the incessant chatter of my roommate and company simply cannot be silenced. The insouciant atmosphere it provides simply cannot be compared to the rigidity of the atmosphere in Davidson Library. Part of this laid-back study environment can be attributed to the fact that noise is, in fact, permitted and thanks to Akoo, maintained at all hours of the day. However, some find the network to be an insufferable distraction to their studies here at UCSB.
Peculiarly, there have yet to be petitions formed to remove other so-called sources of interruption from the UCen’s grounds. These students seem to be perfectly content with the herds of tour groups laden with rowdy high school students that pass through the building as well as the stand-up comedy and live music performances at Nicoletti’s Open Mic Night every Wednesday night. Really? Of all things, it’s the background noise of Maroon 5 that gets them all hot and bothered enough to draft a petition.
If these students were truly interested in restoring a strictly educational foundation to the UCen, this would not be the place to start. Background noise on a few television sets is hardly the issue here. And if for you it is, there is a reason Davidson library exists, with eight floors growing progressively quieter as you move up each floor.
Although the Akoo network can be quite annoying at times, repeating the same seven songs over and over again in different variations, I remain particularly indifferent to the situation. The fact of the matter is, the disturbances that these televisions are causing are minuscule and venturing on nonexistent and the failure of the petition does nothing else but to validate this. A mere 189 of our campus’s thousands of students cannot bear to listen to one more hit single by Katy Perry and are finally voicing their opinions, but unfortunately for them, it looks like Akoo is here to stay.
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