Use all the sports clich+â-¬s you want. It's crunch time. We're at the two minute warning. Down the stretch we come. There's only a few weeks left in the semester and students are opening their textbooks for the first time. It's time to buckle down and get serious.
Because of those dreadful circumstances, we students have a responsibility to help each other out. That doesn't mean assemble into study groups on Thursday night over a case of 'Stones, either. All that we should ask of one another is some quiet, specifically in two crucial places: Bracken Library and the classroom.
Common courtesy and common sense have quickly gone to the wayside in these lairs of learning. The library once was a place where someone could go to study and escape the Rascal Flatts-filled hallways of the dorms or the disgusting habits of a roommate. But now, it's impossible to go five minutes without hearing someone's obnoxious ringer at max volume.
Vibration, anyone?
There once was a day when a cell phone conversation would be put on hold until the person with the phone was not audible to dozens of other people. That day has passed. In the last month alone, I have overheard conversations ranging from sexually transmitted diseases to Tom Cruise's hostage relationship with Katie Holmes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop at cell phones. The lovely technology that allows people to be in their own little iPod world also prevents them from following any kind of social norms in the library. If the volume is up loud enough that someone 100 feet away is singing along, it's time to turn it down.
Other iPod users confuse the Bound Periodical section with American Idol auditions. You know all the words to "Your Body is a Wonderland?" We are all very impressed. Martial law should be enacted in Bracken for these types of circumstances. With four floors of information, there's never a shortage of things to chuck at the singing offenders.
The same types of culprits who pull these shenanigans in the library are also the ones guilty of classroom faux pas that occur every class, without fail. Honestly, does someone's cell phone absolutely have to ring every class? It's gotten to the point to where professors aren't even annoyed by it anymore, they just pause and smile at the person until they silence the ringer, or take the call.
Another technological innovation that has done wonders in classroom interruption is our wireless internet network. Now students can sit in groups of 20 with their laptops and simultaneously write on each other's Facebook wall during class. Or better yet, they can even tell stories about their weekend during the lecture. Getting dirty looks from everyone around you? Once a problem, now it's a sign of popularity.
It's hard to take those rules in the syllabus seriously when professors fail to say anything to the people disrupting class.
Do your classmates and colleagues at the library a favor and silence those cells for the remaining weeks this semester. Although it may be hard to adjust to, class is supposed to be a place free of texting, instant messaging, and phone calls. Let's all try to keep that in mind as we prepare for battle during finals week.
Write to Danny at dsdavis@bsu.edu.
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