I affectionately referred to my school last week as the
collegiate Mecca. Any college student within a hundred mile radius was either
heading to Indiana University, or at the very least wishing they were.
Known as the largest partying weekend in the college world,
the Little 500 is, at least initially, a bike race. Fraternities and
independent cycling teams compete in a 200 lap race, with the winner often
receiving offers from international cycling teams.
I strongly believe that you would be hard pressed to find a
student at Indiana University who is more proud of the IU on the front of his
t-shirt. That pride, though, is mixed with a little bit of disappointment.
While the Little 500 is a wonderful time for my peers to appreciate the
excellence of our school, the partying has become debilitating. Parties start
on Thursday night, a full ten days before the actual race. For that week (and
then some), parties are endless, and responsibilities are non-existent. Or at
least that is how they appear. Between the IU strike of two weeks ago and the
Little 5 this past week, class has been downright optional.
College is all about learning how to live in the real world,
and in that regard, we are failing for a week. Responsibilities are ignored
with a reckless abandonment, left for the next week, which is an academic dead
week in preparation for finals. The part where the academic world fails is in
the teachers’ approach during that week. While the students take the week off,
the teachers allow them to. There are no consequences, as a general rule, for the
absences. There is a general understanding that students won’t show up, and
teachers won’t grade them badly for it.
While I appreciate the need for a week of blowing off some
steam amidst the intense pressure of the last month of the year, it is not
acceptable for students to have the ability to screw around for a whole week
without consequences. That is ridiculous
in the context of the real world. If my father decided to take off a week of
work, he absolutely could do that. But he may have to take a lot more than a
week afterward, because he may not be allowed to keep his job. If that’s the
case, why is it acceptable for college students to be allowed to go AWOL for a
week without their teachers keeping them in check?
This is not to say, of course, that all teachers leave their
students loose to wreak havoc. Many do continue life as if it were any other
week. In one of my classes, we had a test scheduled for Friday, the day before
the big race. She was going to give that test no matter what week it was. It
had been on the syllabus since day one. Yet she was demonized by her students.
A mass complaint was filed, with students begging for a change of the test
date. She was made out to be the cruelest woman in the whole world, simply
because she was unwilling to change her academic plan, one which had been in
place for almost as long as the Little 5 date had been scheduled. This was unacceptable
on the part of her students. It is not her responsibility to maintain the party
atmosphere. If she were to teach in the best interests of party life, she would
be doing a disservice to the parents who are, in many cases, funding the
education that these students are throwing away.
The point I am making is not that the Little 500 is bad and
that students are not allowed to have fun on my watch. The point is, however,
that the avoidance of responsibilities must come with an understanding: if I
choose not to go to class, I will risk receiving a bad grade. I will miss
attendance points; I will not be as prepared for the final exam next week; I
will have to make up lost ground. If a
student is willing to say that, willing to take responsibility for their
actions, than the Little 500 is not a problem at all. It is only when they
choose to forsake that that the system falls apart.
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