On the hunt for Yale real estate? Look no further than the Bass Library lockers.

In the basement of Bass Library—underneath the lazy grass of Cross Campus, past the café with brownies dense and rich as clay dunes, through the gate manned by the cross-dressing security guard (he cross-dresses only when off-duty), and down a second staircase that descends beyond, even, the invisible waves of cell phone reception—I own a tiny space of Yale University. Own, perhaps, is an exaggeration. I rent, semester by semester, a space: a total of 196 cubic inches. Of the 397 lockers that line the walls of the bottom floor of Bass, mine is number 252.

From the outside, of course, each locker is indistinguishable from the one beside it. Manufactured by the Republic Storage Systems Co. in Canton, Ohio, the lockers shrink into the wall behind black metal doors. The lockers’ privacy is defeated, however, by the 42 rectangular holes that perforate each door, each about 2 square inches, all offering a limited but sufficient view of the insides.

A shiny silver tag in the center of the door identifies each locker’s number, and on the right edge are three silver circles. The middle circle is a keyhole. The key is gold-colored and clatters when I force it into the hole, jiggling it back and forth before it eases to the left. The student with glasses, crossed legs, and a Collection of Critical Essays by Henry James is visibly agitated by the noise. But inside the locker itself the hum of the library air-conditioning and the tic-tic, tic-tic-tics of hundreds of typing fingers are muted. If I stick my head all the way inside, I feel like I am on an airplane or submerged underwater.

My locker and I share a certain…connection. (I want to use a more powerful word, but it is, after all, only a small, inanimate object.) Perhaps I appreciate that the contents of number 252 trace the breadth of my research at Yale, from the history of the psychoanalytic term “the uncanny” (first coined in 1906 by Ernst Jentsch), to the ongoing debate over a possible correlation between instances of ACL tears and female athletes’ menstrual cycles (my money is on the hormones).

Or, perhaps, I’m impressed by the sheer number of books—and thereby, information—that this locker can store at any given time. My record is a total of 18 musty-smelling books—all pertaining to the experimental feminist author Dimela Eltit and all referenced for a paper entitled “Who Castrated All the Women?” My significantly smaller MacBook, however, another chronicler of my academic life that holds infinitely more information than 18 books, inspires no such awe. So, I suppose, our connection isn’t based on the amount or diversity of my locker’s past contents. And more importantly, I have only 1,000 words to write about Bass Library locker number 252, and all I’ve really written about is myself.

When Danuta Nitecki, now an Associate University Librarian, joined the Yale library renovation project in 1996 as the Library Program Director, she noticed something curious about the students who worked in Bass (then Cross Campus Library). The libraries themselves badly needed renovation: Birds flew in and out of Sterling’s stacks, pipes leaked into CCL, and the study room underneath the Starr Reading Room had been universally renamed “Machine City” for its rows of humming vending machines and badly outdated computers. Yet what Nitecki observed about the students huddled in CCL was not distaste for the place that she describes as a “slum” but, rather, a possessive attachment.

“We observed that students who used this space took it over and used it as their own,” she said. These students moved chairs, tables, and booths; meanwhile, TAs without offices claimed corners as conference rooms.

Nitecki’s observations led the Renovation Committee down a radical path. “We wanted a space that was not only a library, but asked what a library was,” she said. This reimagining of Cross Campus Library coincided with, and drew upon, the rise of the social learning movement, the idea that libraries can be redesigned to facilitate better learning by creating adaptable and varied spaces. And integral to this theory is the ability for students to “own” the space—precisely what the lockers allow.

According to Brad Warren, Head of Access Services at Bass Library, the lockers are not exactly an anything-goes storage unit. “The lockers are intended for storing personal belongings or checked-out library materials,” he said. That means no food, beverages, or unchecked-out library books allowed.

Joe Garibaldi, Security Supervisor in Bass Library, sums up permissible items as “personal effects.” He explained that it’s not Yale Security’s job to police the lockers, but at my suggestion of the presence of illegal firearms, he laughed and, “Well, then we’d have a problem.”

Firearms aside, students in Bass do use the lockers to claim a piece of the larger space. In addition to the expected heaps of library books, some items currently stored in the lockers include: salmon-colored yarn and bamboo knitting needles, numerous coffee travel mugs and umbrellas, a pair of khaki shorts, Soft Light Energy Saving light bulbs, a sleeve of Solo cups, a bike helmet and a bike lock (in separate lockers), and multiple articles of knitted clothing.

For a moment, as I crouch and peer through the holes into other people’s semi-private spaces, I feel I know my classmates more intimately. I know, for instance, that the owner of locker number 218, who is reading Becoming a Revolutionary should become friends with the owner of locker number 27, who, in blatant defiance of the beverage rule, is currently harboring a bottle of water. I feel solidarity with my classmates, who, like me, are trying to connect as much as possible with this place we call Yale—even if this connection is as minor as storing some “personal effects” in a locker. Nitecki remembers the first finals period in the new Bass. At Yale College Council’s urging, the staff of Bass agreed to keep the library open around the clock, a policy some students saw as an opportunity to really claim the space.

“People were actually camping out!” she said. “They had a tent, sleeping bags.” These students moved in, stayed for days, and even Nitecki—the advocate of personalized, social learning spaces—said, “That was too much.” I’m not sure; there’s always the chance that cohabitation with so many thousands of books could precipitate some process of educational osmosis. Plus, I think about my affection for my little locker, and I can begin to imagine where those students were coming from.