LETTER: Lacking a sense of propriety

To the editor:

This morning I was at a table in a TSC cafeteria listening to my i-Pod. A group of male students came and sat next to my table. They immediately laced the air with profanities. I could hear them through my headphones. I tried not to hear them.

As they continued with this language, I decided to ask them to please refrain from doing so. I calmly leaned over and in a low voice made this request. They were all quiet for a second. Then the one who had been most vocal looked at me as though I had just shot him in the leg. He became so angry by my simple request that he could hardly contain himself. He told me that he hadn’t been talking to me. He told me that he was not trying to bother me. He made references to religion, assuming my religious stance and that I was self-righteous. He asked me who I thought I was to ask him to stop talking like that. He told me that if I didn’t want to hear him then I should find another place to sit. It was really quite something. And he went on!

Space does not permit the full description of this brief exchange. It was disappointing to hear that language from someone at an institution of higher learning, claiming by his very presence here to be educated.

But whether a student here or not, I was disheartened to see his response; void of respect, courtesy, or consideration-not for me, but for a stranger’s simple request for decency. How easily we treat others as an enemy! In this day and age of “individual rights,” it behooves us to remember social presence, common courtesy, and understanding.

And speaking of rights, people have the right to sit in a public place without having to hear such base language while staying where they are seated. People have the right to civility without having to find it only in seclusion. The onus of subduing is, or ought to be, on the insensitive and irrational, not the other way around.

Matt Barclay