Match or Mix?

How does SMU pair up roommates and suitemates?  I’ve seen that some schools use computer matching, like a dating service: morning person or night owl, heavy metal or hip hop, and what about race, sexual orientation, religion?  But how important is it to be compatible with your roommate?  

In my freshman year, I had two roommates, one from Boston, and after she transferred mid-year, one from Philadelphia.  To my conservative and middle-class West-side Cleveland view of the world, these girls gave me my first introduction to a real-live Democrat, a Jew, a non-virgin, classical music, and the sultry pop singer Ketty Lester.  

The Boston roomie drove me a little crazy when she brought her drum set back after Thanksgiving and set it up in the room.  We were opposites but became friends; I visited her the next summer and we drove all the way from Boston to Provincetown and back in one day, just talking.

I have to admit that roommates can be stressful; ultimately I wound up living with my twin sister by the junior and senior year, but I still have to agree with this column by Maureen Dowd about why it’s good to have a roommate who is NOT like you because college should be a time to get out of the confines of your familiar world. 

Good Things Go Viral Too

 With all the talk about cyber bullying and other bad effects of the Internet, it's nice to know that technology can also help people bring about positive change in the world.  The best recent example of this was after several suicides by bullied gay young men, including the Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, one person in Ft. Worth decided to speak up.  Joel Burns is on the Ft. Worth City Council, so he already had a platform and a camera for his speech about his own experiences growing up gay.  However, the speech he gave on Oct. 10 was so honest and well-composed and emotional that it became an Internet phenomenon. It went viral.

Rhetorically, the speech was aimed at gay and lesbian youth, and the message was don't consider suicide because if you "stick around,  . . . it gets better."  He revealed his own suicidal thoughts while growing up. But while he addressed the GLBT audience,  I'd like to think that any intolerant, prejudiced people who take the time to watch the speech might also be affected by it. His decision to give that speech is exactly the kind of thing Siegel meant when he talked about the brave leaders who speak up against injustice can change information in the news into knowledge and understanding.

But how many bullies have watched the speech?  How many religious nuts who think homosexuality is a sin would rethink their views?  The only hope is for more people to follow Burns's example and speak out.

A Climate of Insensitivity

Since my 1302 class this spring is about civility and its possible decline in the past few years, a letter to the Dallas Morning News editor about incivility by SMU football fans caught my attention.  The author of the letter, a woman whose daughter attends TCU, wrote that when she, her husband, and their daughter walked to the game through the tailgating, SMU students engaged in rude name-calling toward the daughter, who was so upset she decided not to attend the game with her parents. 

Trash-talk is part of sports rivalry. Some trash talk shows school spirit. But name-calling of a personal nature is more like bullying.  If your intention is to hurt someone’s feelings, that’s bullying, not school spirit.  When you stop thinking about how the other person feels, that’s the beginning of the end of a civil society. 

During last year's big snowstorm, SMU students got pretty wild, throwing snowballs.  But the fun went too far when they pelted snowballs at girls who were just walking along with umbrellas up, trying to stay dry.  I felt a little sick watching a video of this posted on one student’s blog.  The victims tried to ignore the taunting and the snowballs that were denting their umbrellas. What was funny insensitivity to others' feelings?

These seem like small incidents, snowballs and name-calling, but my point is, incivility can be like a snowball, and when it gets going, a climate of insensitivity becomes acceptable.   The result can be tragic, like the incident at Rutgers this month, where someone’s idea of a funny prank at his roommate's expense ended in the roommate’s suicide.

While the video was streaming, viewers posted comments, but none of them  were outraged.  Nobody spoke up to ask what kind of  cruel person would violate someone's privacy like that.  How brave do you have to be to ask somebody quit being insensitive?  If people don't speak up, they tacitly approve of incivility.