Letter to Cecil

For my letter assignment, I chose to write a letter to President Samuelson about inappropriate use of media in the library. Some of my group members will relate to this. It really ticked me off, so I figured I would have enough passion to write about it, as I truly feel strongly about it. So, without further ado (or as someone once said, blah blah blah) here is the letter:

Dear President Samuelson,

As an assignment for my Media, Family, and Human Development class we have been asked to write a letter to an authority in some area regarding an aspect of media that we wish to change. I contemplated what and who to write, and could not help but think back to a negative experience that I had with media here on BYU campus in the library.

I encountered the problem while trying to complete a group project for a class. There were five of us in the group and we needed to be in the “No Shh Zone” to talk and input statistics into SPSS for a content analysis research project. We were extremely frustrated when we got to the computers and counted at least 10 people on computers either browsing Facebook, watching Youtube videos, or playing computer games. They were by themselves, not talking, and enjoying their media. But while they enjoyed their wasted time, we waited for 20 minutes for a computer to open up in the only available space that we could complete our project (on campus because we needed SPSS and “No Shh Zone” because we needed to talk about it).

I was wondering if there were any regulations that could be placed on that area, as to allow availability for those who truly need those resources for school purposes. I do not in any way think that these things should be banned from campus, but maybe they should be given lower priority regarding the use of the computers. For example, we thought that it might be appropriate to place a sign with the following statement: “Employees or Students have the right to ask students to leave when browsing facebook, watching movies, playing games, etc. if there are other students waiting to use the computers for school-related assignments.” I hope you will consider this idea in hopes of improving the learning atmosphere at Brigham Young University. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Leah V. Jesperson

(Bloggers: Bless your heart if you read this entire letter:)