Newsfeed
Printer-Friendly ModeStudents redefining reputation
September 19, 2005 —
After a week of revisiting the horrors of 9/11, witnessing the apocalyptic scenes of a flooded New Orleans, and seeing an orchestrated suicide bombing campaign in Iraq, it has been difficult to be optimistic about the world. There has been a total focus on everything wrong in society, and little focus on who is trying to make it a better place.
My melancholy week only seemed to take a turn for the worse when I realized I lost my wallet on campus. An initial call to University Police turned up nothing, so I essentially resigned myself to the wallet's loss. After retracing my steps, I immediately canceled my credit cards, figuring that would ward off potential thieves from ruining my credit rating.
Yet several hours later, I had the wallet back in my pocket. An anonymous passerby turned in my wallet, when they could have so easily taken the money out, and thrown the wallet away, or bolted to 7/11 for free gas and a quick splurge with my credit cards.
I realized something immediately after getting my wallet back - people are not as corrupt as everyone thinks. I assume most people would have an initial reaction very similar to mine had they lost their wallet. But to at least one person on campus, doing the honest thing still mattered. I never found out who returned my wallet, but I hope that leaves me to believe everyone on campus could have found it.
It was probably one of those serendipitous students. You know, the ones who wait a few extra seconds to hold the door open for you, when it's easier (and quicker) to slam the door in your face. The very next day, as I was carting a load of newspapers across campus, a student waited a good ten seconds to hold the door open for me. She didn't need to do that for me - she could have left me to hit the handicapped button, but she saw I could use her assistance, and took a few seconds out of her day to put a smile on my face.
After attending the Kochville Township Planning Commission meeting on Monday, I would swear residents thought SVSU was a penal colony rather than a University. I thought residents were proud of SVSU; instead, they seemed ashamed the University was growing. Residents seemed convinced students were going to vandalize their homes, rape their daughters, and ensure a steady stream of alcohol flowed alongside Pierce Road.
I suppose it would be fitting, then, to refer to student housing as a ghetto - after all, complaining residents probably ignore the plight of Saginaw's poverty a few miles away just as much as they want to ignore SVSU a few blocks away. But students are not going away: today we may be across the street from you; tomorrow we may be all around you. A growing university (and hopefully the Township board) is not going to abrogate its duties to thousands of students for the concerns of a handful of residents.
Concerned residents could succumb to their fears of us and move away (creating housing likely to be bought and rented to ... students), or they could accept the growth of the campus community and work with students. There are plenty of student organizations that do community volunteer work, and if Kochville Township residents want their help, all they would have to do is ask.
I take pleasure in seeing smiling faces in my classes and in the halls. Sure there are students who stumble out of bed five minutes after class starts to complain about everything in their lives, but there are also the students who go out of their way to be extra courteous. Simply saying hello is better than putting your head down and staying in your own little world.
I admit I am as guilty of this as anyone else. But the events of the past week have made me consciously try to be a more amiable person on campus. If students don't act this way, then we play into the hands of local residents, and don't deserve more housing options. But in the end, I know the campus is cordial enough to show local residents just how wrong they are.