In the midst of the fall foliage turning its signature colors, one rogue student has harnessed the weather to bolster his political agenda.

At around 4 a.m. on Monday morning, students leaving the 24-hour space in the Bertrand Library noticed something odd when they pushed on the doors to exit — they wouldn’t budge. Fearing they were locked in, the students frantically tried every single door in the library, but soon realized that they were truly trapped.

Most students simply waited out the blockage peacefully, but some broke into the Bertrand Library café and stole day-old scones and chocolate-covered pretzels. Public Safety officer Daniel Donat responded to the pervasive calls for help coming from the 24-hour space.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Officer Donat said. “There were leaves piled as high as the second-floor windows, and it took me two hours to hand-shovel out all them leaves. A young man walked by and asked, ‘Hey, you know it’d be easier if you had a leafblower, right?’ And I told him, ‘Leafblowers are for the weak, inefficient and lightweight.’”

A rake that was left on the quad was taken in by Public Safety and tested for DNA. It was traced back to one Brad Mann ’20. 

The Bucknellian tracked down Mann and he stated, “I just hate books. There, I said it. I hate paper, I hate carrying around heavy textbooks. You could say I care about the planet because I want to strip books from the face of the earth.”

We walked with him to Bertrand Library to see the fruits of his labor. Mann broke down in tears when his fellow classmates continued to stream into the library normally after the majority of the leaves had been swept away.

“All of this hard work, years of training, reduced to this?!” Mann said. 

At least now the University can rest easy knowing all leaves are in their rightful spots — namely, not in front of the library.