Kudos to Lucas (a.k.a. that crazy Californian) for doing this issue first (check out fuck it's cold), but I feel something has to be said. I am referring to the Colgate Gone Wild video. For those of you who are on the outside, it involves the drunken ravings of two topless - and, incidentally, inebriated - members of our fine Colgate community. Anyway, these girls willingly went on camera, and the video was then distributed to the friends of the recorder. One kid decided that the video alone was not interesting enough, and added music to it. This is all nicely outlined by Lucas in his post.
So the issue here is, why is the guy who added the music being disciplined? In fact, while many may disagree with me here, I don't think the guys did anything wrong, other than distributing the video. But even then, it wasn't to everyone, and it's not like they were selling it. They were being boys. So who is to blame here? The girls. They were the ones who went in front of the cameras. It's not like they were unwilling. It was their fault they got drunk, and went topless in front of a recording video camera. How can they possibly get away with blaming someone else?
College is supposed to be a learning experience for everyone. I'm not speaking in terms of academics, but in terms of real life. We all make mistakes, we all do stupid things sometimes. The mature ones are the ones who take responsibility for their own mistakes. So the fact that the school is endorsing the lack of responsibility exhibited by these girls is appalling to me. Of course, the administration has done quite a bit to turn people's heads recently.
Here, I am referring to the administration's war against the frats. It all started with unsubstantiated reports of hazing of pledges, reports that were denied by the pledges themselves. Now, while new rules have been made by the administration concerning the frats, and while one charter I know of has been revoked (I wonder what happened to the appeal...), it is still projected that the greek system here at Colgate will be dead within three years.
There is only one way of dealing with this. Some of us are going to band together, rent a house off-campus, and make our own frat. It will be entirely privately-funded, and off-campus, so the school really has little say. The most they can do is force us to live on-campus. But then, we still have the house as a hang-out. I have the feeling that we are not alone in this feeling. If enough kids get behind this, we can create an entirely off-campus greek system, free of the charter rules of the college. Of course, this will lead to far more instances of the kinds of events that the frats are being shut down for. The riddance of the greek system will do more damage in the school's eyes than keeping it. So why fuck with a system that has worked for so many years?
See, all this is really a conspiracy against us, the students. The administration wants to take full control of us. Further evidence of this is the falling budget for CAB, which sponsers concerts, movies, and other events for the enjoyment of the students. Is this a punishment for our actions during the football season, when we tore up the goalposts? Or could this be a means of maintaining order in the student body? Personally, I believe neither of these is the case.
I believe that research will find that performance rates here at Colgate have been dropping. This administration is frantically floundering about for a way to rectify the situation. The only way they see fit is to turn Colgate into M.I.T., an entirely humorless school that also sports one of - if not the - highest student death rates in the country. Among other things, these deaths at M.I.T. are due to drunkenness, alcohol-poisoning, and suicide. And I should know, being from Boston and having a father who graduated from the school in question. The thing is, these incidents root out those students who are not dedicated to their studies, and those who are performing poorly, and eliminate them from the college society. Thus, the average performance numbers go up due to the fewer number of students, all of whom perform well.
Now this all begins to make sense, doesn't it? I recommend everyone watch out for each other. If you're feeling depressed, talk to the people around you about it. It's their duty to you and to themselves to help you deal with it. Stop doing class work, get the worst passing grades you can, or fail if you want to. The important thing is that we show this administration that we're onto them, and we're going to fight to the finish.
Until next time,
Goose
©2004 by Goose
