Picture this: you're in your room somewhere in the River when suddenly, the blitz you've been waiting for pops up on JoshGreenMail(TM). The "study session" cue you've been waiting for all evening has arrived, and instantly you're off to Topliff to meet with your ... lab partner, we'll say. You stride proudly across the Green and pause for a moment in front of Topliff's front door -- it's locked.
"[Censored by COSO]" you think to yourself, "I've forgotten my master key for which I paid a $30 deposit!"
Being a typical Dartmouth student, you realize that you don't know the phone number. Having no way of entering the building and having said you'd be right over, you only now fully comprehend that you are indeed in a world of spite.
"ORL!" you scream, as a snide passerby offers a snickered, "not tonight, big guy."
A Safety and Security officer overhears your loud protestations on the unfairness of everything, assumes you're drunk, pulls out her trusty blackjack, bludgeons you over the head and manhandles you into the back of her evil green van.
Forty-five seconds later you're in Dick's House, wondering where it all went wrong, and it hits you: "This all began when the Student Assembly turned their backs on us students and voted to create a permanent campus-wide lockdown."
Yes, Student Assembly has apparently decided to do away with what freedom we have in regards to the unique open atmosphere of our campus. Just a few terms ago Josh Green and pals were battling ORL over their current door-locking policy -- leaving only one door per dorm unlocked -- and now those turncoats have just approved a plan to lock all doors at all times.
Sure, we've had our vandalism and last term's Streeter Spoogemeister incident, but how many of these crimes will be prevented by the new policy? A misanthropic nonstudent can invariably gain access to any of the dorms by simply waiting for someone with a key to enter and then following behind. Since most campus vandalism is perpetrated by students anyway, taking extra security precautions against outsiders is little more than an undue hassle.
What if the Student Assembly manages to somehow foist this particular resolution upon the student body? What's next on the agenda? Here are a few of my very own ideas for making this campus a safer, happier place for all:
-- Security Cameras at Every Doorway: Yeah, this would work great. S&S can watch for intruders all day and all through the long, scary Hanover nights.
-- Required Flak Jackets: You've got to prepare for all possibilities. What if the Hanover Police lose their cool while chasing a streaker across the Green and start opening fire?
-- Chastity Belts: Wow, if we were all required to wear chastity belts, and if only Dartmouth students were allowed to "obtain a key with a $30 deposit," nobody would ever suffer the sexual deviancies of Hanover's twisted townspeople.
--Two-Way Television Screens: Put one of these babies in each dorm room, and you'd surely prevent any lascivious or illicit behavior.
-- Seal off Borders of Dartmouth: The most comprehensive solution to our problems. To hell with door locking, let's just have armed checkpoints at all roads leading into Dartmouth and call up that Snake Pliskin fellow.
These new policies may not be widely approved of by the student body, but hey, if Josh Green is truly "not concerned about casting one of his first major votes as Assembly president-elect against the majority opinion of the student body," what's to stop him and other valiant Assembly representatives from supporting these sure-to-be unpopular policies as well?
Thank you, Student Assembly, for proving once again that democracy does fail at times. It's too bad that our elected representatives have decided to represent not our interests, but their own overprotection fetishes. We don't need ten out-of-touch students using their offices to live out their father-figure fantasies.
I believe Josh Green said it best: "I think what I felt...was a distinction between what I feel and what a majority of the students feel." To clear up any ambiguity, let me rephrase: "I did what I wanted to do, not what the students who elected me want me to do."
Please, dear Student Assembly, get back to your business of debating over useless issues which have no effect on our daily lives. We appreciate your guidance so long as you stick to appointing committees, disbanding committees, appointing new committees, debating whether or not to appoint even more committees and interpreting the conclusions of committees. The student body (or at least this one) does not appreciate your paranoia. Let us remain students, not prisoners.
