Fight against serenity

There are fewer and fewer places on campus to find peace and quiet, columnist Giselle observes. Even her favourite bench is now surrounded by fences and drilling machines.

Two months ago I wrote a eulogy to the secluded Pierre Bayle Monument. A pavilion partially hidden among the trees at the edge of campus, making it the ultimate place for all kinds of secret activities: crying, smoking and kissing. The place felt like a refuge. But there is a reason I have to write about it again: the green area around the monument has been fenced off and dug up by a team of mechanics who keep their radio on all day.

The university is waging a war against serenity and seems to be winning. There are hardly any places left to unwind.

Lately I have often been in the library from 10.00 am until 8.00 pm. While I write my thesis, life goes on: I get rejected for a master’s, my knees hurt and I talk to my friends. Because I work so much, everything hits hard and I do not believe I can or want to stop that by putting my life on hold until a deadline has passed. I try to create space by seeking out beauty. I thought I had found that in the Pierre Bayle Monument and the fact that it is now surrounded by fences and drilling machines disappoints me. It is a bit like finding out that the boy you fancy is hiding his girlfriend.

Apparently a new heat regulation system is being installed for the Theil Building. The mechanics are now constructing a heat storage facility. This will take months. Men are drilling large pipes into the ground and moving piles of earth from one place to another. They drink coffee together and wear T-shirts from their company in Dedemsvaart. We wave at each other when I walk past. At the end of the day they all get into a green van and head home again.

They leave behind containers where grey water trickles from one to another and in the final container a large ball floats on the surface. Large red hoses supply these reservoirs with water. When I walked past the construction site again on Wednesday evening, I saw that a hole had appeared in one of the red hoses and a tiny fountain was now spraying across the grass.

There is little soothing about it anymore. The park, now only half there, is not for students to relax in, but seems more like a place to bury installations and hide the heat regulation system. I would like something like that too: beautiful places to hide my own heat regulation system. Perhaps a storage place for shame beneath my earlobe. Or a spot in my bra where I can replace disappointment with renewed hope. The university is becoming increasingly hectic. I will have to find the peace within myself.