By: Morgan Ross

NORTHFIELD, MN – In a ground-breaking senior comprehensive project (comps), a group of Carleton seniors found 1st Libe to be the quietest floor of the Libe, followed closely by 2nd Libe, followed closely by 3rd Libe, followed closely By 4th Libe.

“Our results were unanimous,” reported lead author Shelby Maxwell. “While the floors of the Libe ranged from quiet, to quiet-ish, to supposed-to-be-quiet-but-not-really, 1st Libe was the quietest. It was like a monastery down there!”

The team spent five weeks living in the Libe, with each member of the team assigned to a specific floor. Using complex auditory device known as the human ear, they spent the month recording each and every sound on every floor of the Libe.

“It was a bit rough for me – I was on 4th Libe,” said co-author Sherman Velmille. “There was so much noise to record. It was like Blue Mondays without the coffee!”

The sounds were recorded on a sophisticated, reaction-based scale, ranging from “what the heck is your problem?” loud to “there’s no freaking way you actually just said words” soft.

“For me, most of the sounds were in the ‘hey, it’s like a nature film narrator!’ category,” said 2nd Libe expert Donald Cruz.

By far the most challenging floor was 3rd Libe, where Edgar Brantley struggled to come up with an accurate reading.

“The problem with 3rd Libe is that there’s some people that treat it like 4th Libe and some that treat it like 2nd Libe,” explains Brantley.

After weeks of study, however, Brantley had a breakthrough.
“I was in small group discussion one day in my 2a and I was like ‘hey this is exactly what 3rd libe sounds like!’” Brantley said.☐