As a senior who has worked as a building manager for three years, I have seen a definite increase in the destruction of equipment since the game room has become free for students. There are days when hundreds of dollars of broken pool cues are stacked in the corner of the building manager booth, some snapped in half. While the items themselves may seem insignificant (ping pong balls, pucks, pool cues), I feel that this has become part of a wider trend at the College in which students fail to take responsibility for their actions.
Students believe that simply by being rich, their privileges allow them to get away with anything. Even when they admit to doing something wrong, it is somehow not their fault. An excuse I frequently hear in the campus center is, "Well, I was drunk when that happened." This excuse won't fly in the real world and it shouldn't fly here either. Drinking is a choice we make, and we have to accept the consequences of that choice. The students and staff that work at the campus center are here to make sure events go smoothly, to take care of the building and its equipment or even to provide a tasty midnight snack. They are not here to be berated, belittled or subjected to students' belligerence.
The administration's lax disciplinary policy and constant coddling of the students only serves to exacerbate the problem of students' opting out of responsibility. How much longer is the school going to perpetuate the silver-spoon feeding of their students? In my four years, I have seen students return to the college after sexually assaulting others, vandalizing property, cheating on final exams and committing other serious violations, with little to no consequences. The administration's leniency begs the question-what exactly does it take to get kicked out of this college?
The administration needs to revise its disciplinary rules and students need to take responsibility for their actions. Especially in situations such as property damage, all students bear the weight of one student's mistakes. Perhaps we should start with small steps-I could pray for the miracle that students here actually begin respecting their peers in working positions, but I'm afraid that's asking for too much. So, until then, privileges such as free game room time should seriously be reconsidered.
Protest of Justice Scalia
When Justice Antonin Scalia speaks at Amherst next week, we will not be in attendance. We will neither ask questions nor debate Justice Scalia because we believe that the liberal ideals of constructive disagreement and debate only work when both sides act upon these ideals in good faith. We will not offer a tacit endorsement of this man's presence on campus.
There are many who would argue that such a course is contrary to the democratic exchange of ideas, the respect for differences of opinion and the need to maintain some distinction between private preferences and public debate, all of which should organize an academic community. These are all noble ideals but none to which Justice Scalia himself subscribes. Indeed, it is precisely the conceit of public versus private that allows Justice Scalia to indulge in vitriolic name-calling. Thus, for example, those citizens, gay and straight, who disagree with his position on the sodomy laws are part of a "homosexual agenda" (dissent in Lawrence v. Texas).
Fellow judges who disagree with Justice Scalia over the reach of the equal protection clause to prevent discrimination against homosexuals are not just part of a debate over "constitutional interpretation," but rather are on the wrong side of a "Kulturkampf" (dissent in Romer v. Evans). To be against capital punishment, to disagree with Justice Scalia over the morality or legality of the death penalty is not to debate the eighth amendment, but to be a bad Christian and/or a European: "the more Christian a country is, the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. Abolition has taken its firmest hold in post-Christian Europe and has least support in the church-going United States" (from "God's Justice and Ours," First Things 123, May 2002).
Finally, despite his invocation of democratic politics over an 'activist' judiciary, Justice Scalia is suspicious of the effects of popular sovereignty. He urges: "The reaction of people of faith to the tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible" (from "God's Justice and Ours"). For the above reasons and many more, the following professors will stay away: Nasser Hussain, Margaret Hunt, Kannan Jagannathan, Martha Saxton, Jay Caplan, Jamal Elias, Thomas Dumm, Austin Sarat, Paola Zamperini, Martha Umphrey, Deborah Gewertz, Jan Dizard, Robert Romer, Rosalina De La Carrera, David Delaney and Judith Frank.