For instance, when my high school tried to cancel a senior male tradition parodying our dance team in a pep rally, I authored a scathing letter to the dean, president and vice president.,”
Ah, spite. The great motivator. Spite not only inspired me to run for student council in high school, but it's the reason I applied for these 500 words every Tuesday (It's probably also the reason I was born two weeks late in a snow storm).
For instance, when my high school tried to cancel a senior male tradition parodying our dance team in a pep rally, I authored a scathing letter to the dean, president and vice president. We were given 36 hours, with a scoff, to try and make the event happen without the usual support from the school.
The stone-faced administrators who entered rolling their eyes ended up rolling with laughter. It was rumored they considered it the greatest show ever.
Inconsequential? Yes, but arguably one of the best memories of high school. There's even a Facebook group immortalizing what is described as the finest performance the school had ever seen.
While this story is a great anecdote about spite's role in my outspoken, um, witchiness, it's an even better example of spite facilitating school pride.
School pride requires a passionate response to issues affecting the community. After all, how can we truly appreciate our university if we refuse to challenge it?
In this right, school pride is virtually absent this semester. How do I know this? The lonely Viewpoints page. Believe it or not, I pretty much print anything people will submit. To reference Facebook ad nauseam, not only am I looking for "random play," but I'm taking "whatever I can get."
We all know we love the stupid crap people used to write in about: music elitism, incompetence at the Rec Center or, my personal favorite, Marquette's too Catholic/not Catholic enough. But like my spiteful fight to retain our dancing senior guys, this stupid crap has its place. Stupid crap is not only the stuff this paper is made of – and we've all suspected this — it's the stuff a school is made of.
Marquette's identity not only hinges some of the larger scale arguments presented on these pages in the past semesters such as whether or not we should support ROTC or if we deem the word "vagina" as being offensive, it is made up of lots of other seemingly inconsequential decisions and events and traditions – some of which we may not even be aware.
The next page over hosts two short viewpoints, each arguing for things I'd argue which are overlooked by the majority of the community. Though submissions are getting increasingly rare, these letters are fantastic examples of the purpose of these pages. They are, more or less, to serve as a community forum (This is an unabashed solicitation for viewpoint submissions.).
Nothing's too trivial. If it bothers you, chances are that it bothers others. And if something bothers you that doesn't bother other people — well, then that's probably worth exploring too.
I'm just scared that the decreasing submissions to Viewpoints represent a larger trend of blind deference or even apathetic complacence. We're losing our spite, and I don't like it.
To quote a popular variation of Murphy's Law: if everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
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