LETTER: The Howl not hurting anyone
To the editor:
Suspension? Expulsion? Criminal action? I almost laughed out loud while reading Wednesday’s article about the fledgling tradition known as the Finals Week Howl. The thought that a ten minute interruption during finals week would so ruin a student’s focus that he or she would fail a test is ridiculous! I am a junior in business and five-time veteran of Finals Week and cannot believe how someone could blow something like howling in the library so far out of proportion. Heaven forbid a fire alarm go off in the library! The entire student body would fail their classes!
The argument is that, yes, students need a vent for their finals frustration but, no, the library isn’t the place to vent it. I disagree. The library is the perfect place for it. What better way to loosen up some frazzled nerves than to rock the mother boat herself? The great symbol of our finals stress? It is, after all, where all the students happen to be on finals week.
Simply put, it’s a dumb, quirky college thing that gives the university some personality. Something that would influence students to tell friends at other universities how great Utah State is at combining a certain element of fun with their higher education. It’s nothing more than a small beam of light during finals week that, if nothing else, distracts students long enough to keep their brains from frying! I think it’s interesting that something endorsed by what I understand to be a majority of students encounters such violent opposition among those whose livelihoods are actually dependant upon the very students they are opposing. Tuition is expensive. Doesn’t all that money we’re paying entitle us to some sort of pull in the system that lives and breathes through us?
On the defense of the library, I agree that ten minutes is a long time for students to be “disturbing the peace,” as Lieutenant Shane Sessions put it. I believe that five minutes would be ample time for students to get their wiggles out, have a few laughs and get back to the books.
Those opposing the howl need to take a step backwards and look at it from a wider perspective. Which alternative will accomplish more good in the end? Allotting five minutes of a two-week block dedicated to finals study for a noisy new tradition? Or threatening to arrest students for making noise in our library? My belief is that the greater good is accomplished by letting college students be college students.
Lighten up a little, eh?
Jake Dinsdale