Look, college can be pretty rough, no matter what Van Wilder promised it to be. It crams you into shitty dorms with even shittier roommates, overwhelms you with debt, and ravages your brain with early-morning classes. But the University of Utah has apparently hatched an exciting new plan to help students deal with the dark side of higher education—by letting a student install a “cry closet” in the campus library.
Thanks to the new closet, which was dreamed up by University of Utah student and visual artist Nemo Miller, college kids can relieve their stress, one private sob at a time. Buried in homework and feeling down? Dumped via text while studying for midterms? Just plop out a few tears in private and get back to work!
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According to the rules posted on its door, the closet—described as a “safe place for stressed-out students”—has a strict ten-minute-per-weep policy, presumably to accommodate all the college kids in need a brief bawl.
The rest of the rules ask people to knock before entering, for privacy’s sake, and to be only used by one person at a time, so it doesn’t become some sort of terrible sex closet. It also asks people to use the hashtag “#cryclosetuofu” when posting about it on social media, because this is 2018 and we never have to cry alone again.
From the look of some photos on Twitter, the closet actually looks pretty cozy inside, outfitted with padded walls and floor and even a few stuffed animals, in case someone wants to drown a toy in tears.
Sure, the cry closet is basically an art installation, with the University of Utah acknowledging that the whole thing is pretty tongue-in-cheek to begin with, but it’s still found its share of people whining about weak-ass millennials and how they need to “toughen up.” But let’s be real, here: Someday—maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow—you might find yourself in a public space with that familiar lump in your throat and an imminent flood of tears, and say, “Damn, wish I had a small box to go sob inside for ten minutes or whatever.” The world is currently full of things to cry about, so maybe we could use a few more of these things.
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