Sofia Sanchez Salcedo
Reporter
More knowledgeable students should turn to kindness, not coolness, when they are dealing with students who need help or are new. After all, the word “cool” itself denotes a feeling of not being heartfelt and inviting, but uninvolved and distant.
As a freshman, I was shy and naturally fell into the “cool” role because I was an international student from a big city; at the same time, it was hard to make friends.
As I grew up here at Crowder, I also grew friendlier. It seems to be a sign of maturity here at Crowder, the more we have been exposed to the cultures exampled by the staff, the nicer and the more accommodating we get.
“The concept of coolness comes from whoever is the strongest voice within a culture, whoever has the strongest presence,” said Joan Wilson MSW, LCSW, the Social Work Lead Instructor at Crowder College.
So why are friendly students like me being drown out by the loud voices of an aloof and disrespectful minority?
Stephen Rowland, in an article for the London Review of Education, says that kindness is a sign of association. The word “kindness” itself, he says, “is suggestive of a natural relationship of kindness between members of the same family, group, or species.”
It doesn’t take anything more than to go to a school event, such as a basketball game, theater play, or event community service, and look into the crowd to see there are always clusters of people who think it is “cool” to make fun of the event, or not be disrespectful to the people in the event.
If we don’t make a greater effort to not only raise our school spirit, but to also build each other up, I am afraid there will be freshmen who will continue in this tradition of indifference, and eventually, this new culture that the faculty and staff is trying to build with Rowdy the Roughrider, the mascot, and the Blue Crew, the college’s spirit squad, will all be for naught.
College, for freshman students like person major, Crowder seems to be quote. Rationalization.
On the other hand, students who are closer to their graduation date, like me, look at our time here at Crowder fondly. After all, I remember all of the people who showed me the ropes when I was first starting here. It would be terrible to see this kindness from freshman to sophomores disappear because of fear about what people might think about that kindness.
Leave a Reply