Effective Nov. 24, the Maloney Library in the Law School became one of the most exclusive places on campus: Fordham undergraduate students are no longer allowed to use the space during final exam periods. The kicker? While we are forced to succumb to the windowless abyss that is Quinn Library, law students have access to both libraries.

After Law students complained about the noise levels in the library, the administration decided to outlaw any undergraduates from accessing the Law library. Shame on all those undergraduates who don’t know the first rule of how to behave in a library. 

“The Maloney Library in the Law School is currently available ONLY to members of the Fordham Law School community,” an email from the University read. But were the members of the Fordham Law community the only people to have contributed to the creation of said library? What about the undergrads who have diligently paid their exorbitant tuition — and lost hours and hours of sleep to construction workers banging away before the sun was even up? 

Students are outraged. “If I have restricted access to it then refund me my money and charge the law students more,” one student wrote on Facebook. 

“I never thought that I’d be told that I could not go to a library that I paid $40,000 a year to help build,” another wrote. “Come on Fordham, I own at least ten bricks on that building by now.” 

Let’s not forget that for freshmen, Jazzman’s Cafe, located in the heart of the Maloney library, is one place where they can get food. Freshmen don’t have kitchens in McKeon – where can they get food at night if not at Jazzman’s? 

Fordham administration seems to realize that it can’t really accommodate its larger undergraduate class in only Quinn Library and is offering different study spaces on campus, including locations in McMahon Hall and Schmeltzer Dining Hall (which will have extended hours for snacks and beverages). But those will not substitute taking away the right to access to a facility that allows us to study and enhance our education.

Yes, students who don’t know how to behave in a library don’t belong in a library. Drinking in the study lounge? Really? Don’t you know that you can’t even talk when you’re in a library? 

But the rest of the Fordham undergraduate community should not be punished for the actions of a small few, especially when it was a community effort to lay every single brick in that library.