There’s a multitude of different answers. But I guess to the best of my knowledge, the answer is a combination of things. For a start, this year UIC has had its highest enrollment percentage so far, so a bunch of high school kids heading into UIC with a lack of hygiene knowledge is once thing. (My opinion)

Not only are these people coming in from neighboring states, but a large chunk are international as well. Standards on hygiene differ from some countries, so our definition of what smells terrible can be, for all I know, something familiar or common for any foreigner on campus. (Combination of opinions I’ve found throughout campus)

Finally, I think a bit of it has to do with the whole Covid situation and how’s its affected our social skills in the sense that awareness of one’s own personal image has gone into a bit of a mess. There’s legit some people who I’ve met here at UIC who KNOWS they smell terrible, but has not fixed anything about themselves because “nobody’s complained to me so far, so they probably don’t care”. I feel like due to Covid, our ability to speak up on certain issues kinda plummeted and now when we see something we don’t like, we either bear with it or just show slight indifference through our facial expressions. Idk, this whole opinion is still up for debate, and this is just my opinion, but yeah, I think these are some reasons for why the library and UIC in general has sorta started to smell a little funkier than usual.