In an aggressive move last week that has outraged several language clubs on campus, the VUW German Club has annexed its neighbouring hangout space, the Polish library. The move is the second expansion the club has made in three weeks, the last being the integration of the Austrian studies library into the German library on 15 July, as they were seen to be essentially the same thing.
The annexing now sees the German Club occupying two of the four European language libraries that are located on the sixth floor of the von Zedlitz Building at Kelburn Campus. German Club Leader Thomas Golding defended the invasion, saying that the Polish library was comparatively underused by the Polish studies students.
“We’re the biggest language club on campus, and the most social. And for some reason we got the smallest library, even though we have more books than any of the other language libraries, and we have more members using our library,” he said. “We thought, the Polish library almost never has anyone in it, their bookshelves are empty, they have a comfy couch… We’ll just make it part of our living space.”
The invasion took place early last Monday morning, and met with virtually no resistance from the three Polish Studies students who were not in the library at the time. The German Club is reported to have manoeuvred its members into the corridor to the west at 11:02am, then around the corner into the Polish library at 11.03am. As a result of the occupation, the sign on the door was changed from “Polish Library” to “Polish Library, German Annex”, and now sports a small German flag.
German Club plans for the rest of the trimester have also come under scrutiny. They have proposed so-called ‘Competency Camps’ for first-year students. “Basically we’d be doing the whole university a favour,” Golding said. “We’d round up all the first years into the camps and make them learn how to operate the automatic doors, and teach them, you know, general university pedestrianship.”