Late last semester, New York University student Taylor Myers lived in the school’s main library for five days.  If he is not granted more financial aid, he plans to stay there permanently come fall.  He calls it a “sacrifice that must be made” for the sake of his education.

Myers, a rising sophomore, says he simply does not have the money for room and board next year but wants to continue pursuing his acting dreams at NYU.  As Washington Square News staff writer Jordan Teicher reported , “He has four other siblings with college dreams and a mother with medical issues.  As Myers continued to submit appeals for financial aid throughout his first year . . . he hoped that the university would come through with a better package.  It didn’t.”

His fairly recent five-day stay in NYU’s Bobst Library was a test-run to see if he could stomach a long-haul living situation.    

Myers’s suitemate Andrew Duffy, a film major, created a short documentary film about the experiment, titled “Bedless in Bobst.” According to Teicher, “The film, an assignment for Duffy’s ‘Frame and Sequence’ class that was later posted to YouTube, required a student crew of five.  They recorded seven hours of audio and took hundreds of photographs, and even stayed overnight with Myers in Bobst’s lower levels.”

In one scene early in the film, Myers is shown sleeping on the floor of a library study room.  His head rests atop a pair of his sweatshirts, the hood of one draped over his face to block the overhead light.  A security guard had just come by checking student IDs.  

Myers is not the first student to take such drastic measures to stay in school.  His idea to live in the library actually came from the legend of a previous NYU student.  In 2004, according to a Washington Square News archived article , NYU sophomore Steve Stanzak spent the year in Bobst due to financial troubles.  Stanzak earned international media attention and the nickname “Bobst Boy” before being given a free room.

More recently, this past fall, University of Tampa sophomore Enrique Rosado lived almost a week on campus without a room.  As The Minaret reported , Rosado spent his days in the school library, showered in the sports center, and slept behind a computer center.  He ultimately was provided with housing.

So far, Myers is remaining philosophical about his lack of financial aid or guaranteed housing.  As he is heard asking near the close of the film, “What is a home?  Is a home a building?  Is a home a region?  Is a home a city?  Is a home a state of mind or a feeling of the heart?  I don’t know what it is or if I have one. . . . Not having done it [living in the library], you kind of look at it like some badass adventure . . . and then after having done it you’re like, ‘It’s not that awesome.  It kind of sucks.’  But it has changed from something that could be done to something that has to be done.”

What do you think?  Does it truly have to be done?  Have any students done it or something like it on your campus?  And depending, what is the best spot to secretly live at your college or university?

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