photo from Flickr Commons

It seems the ’2031 plan’ isn’t the only alteration NYU is making to its urban campus— they’re also making adjustments to the storied Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, and for an eerie reason.

To preclude the possibility of more suicides inside its library, the school will be adding digital-themed golden panels to the inside of the library’s complex staircase system (picture a very large, wide spiral staircase —its diameter, say, 10 feet— and shoving a 9’11″-diameter tube right down the middle). The panels, which purported won’t block the library’s view of Washington Square Park, will block people from being able to jump from the stairs and crashing to their death on the library’s bottom floor— something that’s happened three times before.

Two suicides occurred inside the library in 2003, prompting the school to construct an unobtrusive, clear barrier along the staircases, but another suicide occurred in 2009. The library has garnered an association with suicide— something that doesn’t bode well for the building’s popularity.

The panels will only weight about 150 pounds each and will not put any consequential burden on the building’s existing construct, the New York Times says.

There are pictures of the plans here and here. Study on.