We
college students just can’t get
no respect
Sean
Cocca
It
has only been three weeks, but already
people are starting to piss me off here
at Cal State Long Beach. My fellow students
seem to have no regard for anyone other
than themselves, and it shows.
People are rude here on campus. They come to class late. They come to class
sick. They are boorish to professors. They are disrespectful to other students.
The list could go on and on. The fact is a lot of people here at CSULB are
rude, and they do not seem to care.
There could be many reasons for this. We are a commuter campus, so there is
no inherent camaraderie among the student body. We have very few, if any, reasons
to hang out on campus. There is no reason to build up relationships with our
fellow students because at the end of the day, almost all of us go home.
Maybe that is why almost no one gives a rat’s ass about anyone else here
on campus.
Take, for example, the people who come late to class. I know there are always
legitimate reasons for being late. But all too often people just oversleep,
leave too late or spend time finishing up some assignment they were supposed
to have started weeks, if not months, ago.
They come in and disrupt the class, shuffle noisily to their seat and ruffle
through their backpacks before getting settled. All the while, everyone else
is trying to politely ignore them while still paying attention to the professor.
It is hard enough to take notes and participate in class, especially a difficult
one, without the added distraction of someone who couldn’t get his or
her act together and get to class on time. Or he or she could just do us all
a favor and not come at all.
But the late student isn’t the only character in the rogues gallery of
rude students. There is also the sick student. You know the kind. He or she
will sit there in class and hack up a lung, spreading infectious pestilence.
Lord help you if you happen to be sitting next to or in front of the contaminated
person. You are almost always in his or her direct line of fire when he or
she spews diseased spittle from gaping craws.
Sometimes you encounter the polite sicky, the one who courteously excuses themselves
to get a drink of water to help suppress his cough. This is all well and good,
except inevitably this person will excuse himself or herself at least a dozen
times before class is over, which means (you guessed it) more distractions
for the rest of the class.
Hey, sick guy. Yeah you with the red face, slight fever and drool hanging from
your lip, do us both a favor and stay home so you can get better and not infect
me in the process.
Another thing I love is when someone will beg and plead with a professor to
let them into a class, and once they get in, they stop coming until there is
a paper due or a test to take.
I remember this happening in at least two of my classes last semester. One
girl claimed she was a senior and needed the class to graduate, so like most
professors, this one let her add the class. The very next day the girl was
absent. She was absent the day after that and the day after that. She was absent
every day up until the first midterm. How is that for respect?
The professor graciously allowed her into the class and the girl repaid the
kindness by skipping class every day except test days. That is just incredible.
If respect isn’t dead, it is in desperate need of a vital transplant
of some kind because it is hanging by a thread. There is never an excuse to
be rude. Never. The world does not revolve around you and your friends, so
stop thinking it does.
People need to stop messing around and start taking school seriously. It is
no wonder the once “four-year schools” have become more “five-to-seven-year
schools.”
You are all paying for this education in some way or another. Would you treat
any other investment the way you treat your schooling? I really hope not.
Sean Cocca is a senior journalism major and the news editor of the Daily Forty-Niner.
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