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Opinion & Editorial
September 28,2012
Potsdam invaded by unimaginative horses The title of this article is a com plete and total lie. Other ages would have called it “boldfaced” in it’s lie 0#//1$+02$.)$./$2#'0.)#34$+$5+2$67+8$ for your attention, because you’re a disinterested college student, and I’m a sad, attentionhungry writer type, and that’s how this exchange goes. You can now set down this paper disgustedly and walk away. But please, don’t, because I have a story to tell you and if you leave I will be so...very...alone. My story goes like this. Here I am, walking across campus, doing what sad, attentionhungry English majors do, that is to say, combing the grass for cigarette butts to eat because, let’s face it, minimum wage and outrageous student loans don’t buy groceries like they used to, and while college feeds the mind, it leaves the body hungry and jonesing for a smoke. But I digress. I’m leaving Timmerman, heading to the Crumb Library, eyes glued to the pavement, until I’m nearly stuck by a hooligan on a skateboard. “Damn kids and their rebellious conveyances!”, I rave to myself. As I raise both my eyes and 54$'/)$)%$(%55-0.(+)#$)%$".5$)"+)$ I am, indeed walking here, I see something astonishing. As I look across the space be tween Crumb library and Mer ritt Hall, there is a line of my fel
low students crossing the grass. Reminiscent of baby ducks, they +7#$ 9+3:.06$ .0$ +$ /.063#$ '3#$ 3.0#$ diagonally across the grass, leav ing a small trail of decimated vegetation in their wake. The Girl who is wearing jeanssoskinny theycouldbepaintedon hides the hatred of the grass she had waaay before it was “cool” with a pair of fake RayBan sunglasses, or at least, that must be why she wore them, because our story is set on a cold, overcast morning at nine a.m.. She is followed by the gentleman whoisapparentlyignorantof bodytemperaturemaintenance. He treads heavily on the soft blades %&$0+)-7#;/$(+7<#)$9.)"$)"#$=.<$=%</$ he has carefully paired with cargo shorts and a Hollister hoodie, ig norant of the fact that his hoodie is counteracted by his short pants and that he is marring the face of our campus. They remind me of a time I went horseback riding in the Hawaiian Islands (I’m well traveled, be jeal ous.) and the leader of the group asked us to look at the ground. As 9#$ 6+>#2$ +(7%//$ )"#$ '#32/$ 9"#7#$ tourists oppressed beasts of burden for their pleasure multiple times a day, we saw many winding little avenues, and it was explained to us that these horses knew the route of the ride well enough that in their la
ziness, they would walk in the same little trail every time if allowed. Now, the leader of the horseback riding expedition mandated that we insist our one thousand pound animals stray away from these paths and assist the owners in breaking them of their bad habit. Here at SUNY Potsdam, however, )"#7#$9+/$0%$/-("$'6-7#$%&$+-)"%7 ity insisting that my peers deviate from this xshaped scar they had carved in the lawn. Despite the per fectly good paved walkways that meander about this place, they must walk there. In lines. Because the living grass is lava and Mom wont let us use the sofa cushions to keep ourselves from burning to death and other equally good reasons. Guys, we all have paid or will pay money to be enrolled in col lege. Many of you pay more still to live within spitting distance of your classrooms. We’re here be cause it’s a privilege, and for the time being, those grounds, that grass we’re tromping on, belongs to all of us. I realize that the short est distance between two points is a straight line (an accomplishment for an English major), but it would take a negligible amount of effort to walk 12 inches to the side of those paths, saving the grass and the time the maintenance staff would spend re seeding it each spring. Now, if
you were listening, you’d notice I didn’t make the oldman demand that, “You snotty kids stay off the lawn!”. I ask for only inches to one side. If that doesn’t appeal to you, think of it this way: We’re here to learn to think outside of our boxes and walk independent paths. How +7#$ 4%-$ 7#=#().06$ -<%0$ 4%-7/#3&$ by heeding laziness and walk ing in the steps of everyone else? Now, I’m going to be roaming the campus as usual this coming week, nibbling on the cigarette butts in my pockets because I can NOT take that COMP 201 class with out nicotine, grumbling to myself +8%-)$9"%$2#(.2#2$.0/)7-()%7$%&'(#$ “hours” could consist of just one sixty minute interval, and ponder ing whether or not the construction of a building just for Crane School of Music is a project funded by mob money. But also, Ill be watch ing you with crazed, shifty eyes, and I’ll be judging you. Each and every one of my peers who puts no thought into their plant stomp ing ways will be greeted with silent condemnation. If anyone would like to join me on the dark side, I’ll be leaving Timmerman at 9 a.m. Bring cigarettes.
Notice how I didn’t call you an idiot? That sure was nice of me. It’s almost as if I wanted to open a dis course about something I disagree with in a civil and respectful man ner. I’m referring of course to your recent editorial piece about “idiots on skateboards.” Believe it or not, I cannot skateboard. I’m sure you’re happy to hear this, because it means I won’t be giving you dirty looks or bloody noses. I may not be able to look “cool” in “wool parkas or kha kis and converse,” but at least I’m not a “total douche.” I’d now like to address some of the generalizations and embellish ments you printed recently. First of all, “technically”, skateboards
are not vehicles. They cannot be le gally driven or ridden on the street, like a bike or car. They are, howev er, like you said, “fast, convenient, easily portable, and can save a lot %&$ ).5#?@$ A"#0$ B$ '7/)$ 7#+2$ )"+)1$ B$ thought those things were all good, but I kept reading and learned the truth. Second, I may not know much about physics, but I do know that it would be almost entirely impossi ble to “cruise down a crowded side walk at 40 miles an hour” on any type of board. The wheels would probably get wobbly and the person would fall off. However, I’m not as good as you are at judging speed by “the wind of passage,” so I guess I’ll never know. Third, your friend
witnessed someone kick a skate board down a hill “where it pro ceeded to hit the legs of a girl at the bottom.” Well, I wasn’t there, but I’m assuming that the board kicker wanted his or her board back, and during its retrieval, apologized for the heinous crime, because that’s what civil people do. Perhaps the girl at the bottom of the hill should have been “aware of other people in existence,” and moved a few steps out of the way to avoid what could have been a crippling injury. I hope she’s O.K now though. In closing, I don’t think that ecstasy makes you veer wildly around, and I think you just chose a drug that you thought was bad to get your point across.
I also don’t think you should hate people you don’t know, especially not forever, and especially not after you say that you’re O.K. with those people. Finally, please don’t push people off their boards in unjusti '#2$7+6#1$)"+);/$C-/)$7#+334$0%)$)"+)$ nice, and you wouldn’t be helping anything. You’d probably be actu ally harming someone severely, seeing as they all go forty miles an hour. But I do see your point, hav ing wind blow up against your face is just the absolute worst.
Hi, Anonymous Nonskate boarder. Thank you for taking the time to respond to my opinion. Let’s break your response down. You saw me refer to a group of ab stracts as “idiots” and got upset, be cause “idiot” is a strong term about someone’s supposed intelligence, so that makes it bad. I guess it was rude of me, but I don’t understand why my level of rudeness is con sidered too strong by you when it’s in reaction to extreme rudeness by people who can’t be bothered to op erate skateboards like other people exist on the sidewalk. Skateboards aren’t vehicles? A#8/)#7;/$2#'0.).%0$%&$+$D#".(3#$+/$ it applies here is “a means of car rying or transporting something”, so okay, I will give you that skate boards aren’t considered a “ve hicle” in the eyes of the law, but they have wheels and they transport stuff, and they go fast, so “techini cally”, one can describe them as a “vehicle” and not be wrong. Basi cally, I believe that if you are using something that is capable of going faster than a person who is walk ing, then you should operate it like a responsible person. Doesn’t mat
ter what it is, wheelchairs, scooters, skateboards, cars, if you don’t use it with consideration of other people, you’re gonna hurt someone. And yes, I did praise skate boards as “fast, convienient, eas ily portable, and can save a lot of time”, because I believe that’s an accurate description of them. I don’t really see how my statement that people who are inconsiderate on skateboards are idiots changes that opinion, because I wasn’t refer ring to “idiot skateboards”. Kind of like, I’m okay with guns, because they have practical uses and can do a lot of different things. But people who are idiots with guns suck and I do not like them, because they use guns wrong, and it usually means someone’s gonna have a bad time. Same goes for skateboards. Yeah, I know its probably not possible for someone to go down a sidewalk on a skateboard at forty miles an hour, but I was employing hyperbole for the sake of the argu ment. Skateboards can go pretty fast compared to someone walking. Things that go fast hurt if they run into people. That was pretty much the bottom line of that particular
argument, and the fact that people can’t go 40 miles an hour on a skateboard doesn’t change the fact that someone going 10 to 15 miles on a skateboard would still really hurt if they ran into you. Oh man, let’s get to my favor ite part where you talk about how its the girl’s fault she got hit by a skateboard because she “should have been aware of other people’s existance” and magically known that the person behind her was go ing to kick their skateboard down a hill and hit her, because its not like the skateboard owner should have been aware of what they were do ing or anything, maybe given the person a warning that, hey, I just kicked something at you, look out? Nah, totally that girl’s fault she got hit. And even if the owner of the skateboard apologized, which I’m sure they did, I was using the inci dent to illustrate a wider pattern of certain people on skateboards not being considerate to other people, I.E, trying to do tricks, maybe not even fancy ones, that could hurt people nearby if they mess up. Ecstasy would probably make you do some pretty weird things
on a skateboard, but you got me, I was using it as more hyperbole. I’m assuming most skateboarders on campus don’t drop E and then cra zily skateboard into crowds, they 2%$)"+)$C-/)$'0#$9.)"%-)$27-6/? E02$'0+3341$C-/)$)%$(3#+7$)"#$+.7F$I was not referring to all skateboard ers or skateboards in my opinion. Instead I was referring, exclusively, to those people who act obnoxious and with no consideration to other people, on skateboards. In closing, I don’t actually push people off skateboards because I do have a concious, but I do have the right to dislike people who are rude and inconsiderate on skateboards and almost hit me, and yeah, I can dislike them forever if they keep doing it. (You’re right, “hate” is a strong word, and since I don’t have energy to waste on actually “hat ing” idiots on skateboards, I’ll tone it down to a “dislike”.)
DAKOTA FARLEY
Editorial response: An open letter to Emily Beatty
ANONYMOUS NONSKATEBOARDER
Response to “Editorial response”
EMILY BEATTY EDITOR IN CHIEF