The Red and Black

Issue date: 10/1/08 Section: Opinions

MARC McAFEE

What's next, confession booths on North Campus? Will we have to tell administrators if we committed a sin over the weekend?

From the looks of the headlines lately, it could happen. Whether you ate your roommate's food out of the fridge or left the toilet seat up in your girlfriend's apartment, you better go tell Rodney Bennett, our vice president of student affairs. He might want to know these things.

All that might be the next logical step since disciplinary problems committed by University students anywhere may have to be reported to the Office of Judicial Programs beginning in 2009.

If you don't, you face suspension or expulsion from the University. And if you do? You face suspension or expulsion from the University.

So what's the point?

Well, as High Priest Bennett said, students are expected to "abide by established policies and procedures."

I'm a little confused. I thought as a University student, I can expect to be punished by the school only for violating University policies and procedures. Wrong. They want to get me for all sorts of situations, "whether criminal or disciplinary."

We're not talking just about downtown Athens arrests.

If Billy Bob from Towns County gets caught peeing on a dumpster way up there, wherever the hell that is, he has one more group of avengers on his tail.

After Townes County and Billy Bob's parents are done with him, Student Affairs wants to get a punch in as well.

Is this reasonable?

Does the University have a right to punish students for things that happen even hundreds of miles away from campus?

I don't think the University can justify forcing students to report petty misdeeds unless they are an immediate threat to other students or the University.

Billy Bob wielding an axe is one thing. But doing a little water damage to a Towns County dumpster is no threat to the rest of us.

Now, just maybe all this isn't about conduct threatening to other students.

Maybe it's about being a threat to the University administration's image of what the ideal University student should look and act like.

Is all this simply about not realizing that 18 and 19 year olds sometimes do stupid things and must learn from their mistakes? Have Bennett and Company forgotten what it was like to be in college because it was so long ago for them?

Of course.

Maybe the people who authored this plan never had a blemish on their records, and are just boring individuals who lead boring lives. After all, who else would want to work for Michael Adams?

I know our alumni were not saints when they were students here.

Indeed, many would not have survived under policies like the one proposed to go into effect in 2009. In the past, college students were allowed to be college students, instead of being kicked out of school before they even got another chance to clean themselves up.

With apologies to Judicial Affairs, good students can occasionally get into trouble.

Yes, some scholars occasionally - gasp - drink too much alcohol. They shouldn't be expelled or suspended because of a simple slip-up. How long would a young Ernest Hemingway last at our school?

Now, I'm not here trying to argue that the University should allow a rapist to sit next to me in women's studies 1101.

But short of that, I think the University should keep its long and pointed nose out of my business. Minor problems should be dealt with at the local level. Let the courts decide how to punish our citizens.

Let the University worry about University problems.

There's no shortage of those right now.


- Marc McAfee is a senior from Kennesaw majoring in broadcast news.

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