There's been something growing on this campus lately. No, it's not the number of students in the freshman class or your student loans (for once).
It's something a bit more serious and a lot more pathetic than either of the aforementioned.Theft.
What is with this campus? Why is it all of the sudden unsafe to leave money in your pocket in a dressing room while you are onstage?
Why can't you leave a bag unattended before some nosy thief finds his way to your cellular phone?
In case you haven't been reading your Blitzmail lately, somewhere between the annoying prank blitzes and WAC HAPS, one may notice the growing number of e-mails with a "Help-my-bag-was-stolen" theme.
This is not a joke.
A friend of mine who recently graduated from Washington and Lee told me how he could leave a wallet full of money on a table in the library and would have no fear that it would either be there the next day or that it would be returned to him.
The honor code is so strong at W&L that it isn't just some pledge they sign on exams and papers. Students take it to heart so much that it becomes a personal issue of respect.
Where is that at WC? Seems pretty non-existent to a certain extent.
Maybe it's asking a bit much to expect something that you put in the hallway to actually be there the next night.
Maybe it's too tempting to hang sorority letters on one's hall. We forget how some people can't push down that deep urge to rip them off the walls; they were apparently absent during that ten-minute talk in kindergarten.
Do I sound bitter? Good, because I am.
I come from a high school where the sense of community was outstanding, and students respected each other. It's possible this sense of respect grew because we actually said hello to most people we passed in the hallways.
And from the sound of a recent opinion piece in The Elm on how students barely acknowledge each other on the Cater Walk, maybe it's possible that the lack of respect for people's possessions on campus grows from the fact that we can't even respect each other with an acknowledgement.
People will of course pass the buck when it comes to theft: "He asked for it to be stolen because he left it unattended."
This was my viewpoint on my first day at WC when I saw students leaving back-packs outside of the Dining Hall as they ate inside.
I found this to be a completely idiotic move. I felt this way because of how I had been raised (and where: New York isn't a prime place for bags to be left oh-so-casually as one dines). I felt this person was asking to be a victim and get his or her books taken.
But then I realized that they could leave the Hope Diamond under flashing neon lights in the middle of the Cater Walk, and they still have no right to be blamed for when it gets stolen.
Just because some immature person can't find enough satisfaction in his or her own life that he or she must lift other people's possessions does not make that previously trusting victim guilty.
So here's the deal: what's yours is yours, and what's mine is mine. Let's keep it that way. But say hello to me, and I just might share.
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