To the Editor:
A few thoughts on Kevan Higgins' September 24th column ["Student Behavior is Not Prey to Administration's Policies Anyway"]: Perhaps Higgins doesn't quite understand a fundamental part of living under a government the presence of laws. While I certainly sympathize with his desire to kill his brain cells (and heartily cheer on his progress), his methods for doing so just happen to clash with the laws of the country in which he has chosen to live. Surely he knows this, or he would not have an ingrained fear of green vans; an innocent man has nothing to fear from those who enforce order.
Enforcing the law is not micromanagement; it is an attempt to protect people from their own stupidity. If Higgins has a problem with the laws, the place to complain is to the legislature, which has the power to change them, not to the College. Furthermore, spending a night in Dick's House is not the College's ideal compromise between students' desire to drink and the College's desire to enforce the laws of the land; alcohol-free programming is. But it appears that Higgins has been too busy running away from Safety and Security to check into other social options on campus.
As for Higgins' desire to be treated like a person, I would argue that he already is: Real people in the real world have to obey the law. Just because the College does not look away every time he breaks the law does not mean they do not respect him as a person, but rather, just the opposite. College is the last place students have a chance to adjust to real life before actually entering it. The College offers students complete freedom to act as they choose, but they must learn to pay the consequences for the decisions they make along the way.
