Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Is it a real letter?

I read this letter to the editor in the Northwestern this morning. It was so unbelievable, that I felt like it must be a parody.

A student writes the newspaper and says all they do all weekend is drink. Why doesn't the University and city appreciate them for that?

Besides the strange writing (what exactly is an "alcoholic event"??), this student really demonstrates what was wrong about the Goat Pack event. He also makes it clear why UWO has a bad reputation in Oshkosh.

Shouldn't a student be proud of his study habits, grades, and community engagement? Instead he is proud of his drunkenness.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have had lots of students like that. I would say he is fairly typical. Sad but true

Anonymous said...

Yeah, if it's a parody it's a spot-on parody; the writer has exactly captured the attitude evinced by way-too-many students. For that reason, I suspect it is a sincere and authentic letter.

I do not know that this attitude is much different than ones that my peers and I held in college in the 1970s. I think the difference is that we realized how terribly juvenile and irresponsible it sounded to say such a thing out loud in a place where non-students might hear it. We were veterans of the Hippie-Redneck Wars and knew better than to give our enemies and detractors ammunition to use against us.

We toed the line and tried hard to present a respectable facade to the world at large. Whenever anything went awry, we quickly fingered "a small but vocal minority of troublemakers who are not representative of the student body" (i.e., who didn't get the memo to shape up in public).

We knew the attitude evinced by the writer was not an "adult" attitude, and never would have been foolish enough to advocate it publicly, despite embracing it among ourselves. Diod that make us hypocrites? Perhaps. But as they say, "Discretion is the better part of valor."

Anonymous said...

its by a real student, he was in in one of my classes a while back

Anonymous said...

More discussion including a post by "KyleR" are found here:
http://forums.thenorthwestern.com/viewtopic.php?t=15416&start=15