Through the bustling halls and classrooms of Utah Valley University, there is one of Dante’s “Seven Deadly Sins” that seems most apparent – sloth. Sloth is the ugly monster that leads us even deeper into the inferno. For who among us has not followed its delightful call, it sounds something like: “meh,” or “someone else will do it.”
I call to light the conditions that we as students create in the hallways and classrooms. If there is one thing that is deplorable about this school, it’s the way the students, and even in some cases the faculty, treat it. Gone are the days when America was the shining example of progress and good manners, if we ever had any. Here are the days when we depend on others to right the wrongs that we ourselves commit.
Take, for example, the wonderful case of room 406 in the Computer Science building on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. This room has standard capacity of 50 seats in neat, ordered rows. But for reasons unknown, the room is the unlucky recipient of a tragic story. A simple trip to this room in the late afternoon will show the tables and chairs not in orderly rows. Instead a square arrangement on par with Stonehenge, half of the chairs are shoved somewhat forcefully into the front of the room along with the unused tables left for the next class or perchance, for the custodians to clean up.
“How do they have time to move all of those chairs around?” said Sid Russell, a junior in Digital Media. “They’re just moving around desks and not really starting on time.”
In a likewise manner, the atrium outside this classroom and the concourse in the Liberal Arts building are left in equally tragic conditions: trash scattered over the floors, pencil marks on the walls, and the incoherent yet offensive marks from the unprofessional student in the restrooms. We are an institution of higher learning, not some truck stop where layers of unknown substances sit upon the floor of the restroom.
Why must the students of this fair school treat the halls as if they were a playground or a high school? Are we not all college students, which in most cultures are considered professional students? Why must we think that freedom of speech means that we can deface the campus that exists to put us in a better place?
The downfall of courtesy in America seems to be a neglected subject. Decency demands that we stop to think about the consequences that our actions have on others. If we let the rude habit of sloth get into our lives, we will become bitter husks of college students built on layers of pizza and Mountain Dew.
What we do here will have an effect on our families, friends, and future neighbors. They may come up to us one day and ask, “Why are you such a mess?”
Who are we to fight human nature? For those of us who are bent on creating problems for others for the rest of our lives here are some steps we can take into the lethargic future:
First, think about all of the people that your laziness might affect and how they feel about it. Second, ignore them.
Third, if anyone ever confronts you about laziness, tell him or her someone else will do it.
“Things get lost, they get broken.” Russell said, but there’s a deeper meaning to his words. We get lost, we get broken and all we can do about it is to say “meh.”
