In a bizarre protest at Emory University last month, more than a dozen students reversed roughly 125,000 books on the second floor of the school's library in a covert action that took all night.

Upset by what they described in a letter sent to the campus newspaper The Emory Wheel and local media as the "selfish rush to a career of their classmates", the students said their action was designed "to make people think."

"The books on campus are the lasting living testaments of the human search for understanding, don't turn your backs on them" the letter said.

In an interview with three of the perpetrators conducted by the Executive Editor of the Wheel the students said they had planned the action for more than a year, and chose the second floor for its symbolic value because it hold the library's collection of books on music and art.

"We wanted to show students that it's okay to be crazy, occasionally to do some outlandish thing and not always go strictly by the book. If you can't be idealistic when you're young and in college, when the hell can you be? It only gets harder and harder," the protesters said. The Emory Wheel, February 8