“You’re Just a Student,” is an Insult.
First Step – Taking Notice
Yeah, that’s right. “You’re just a student” is not only insulting to you, but more importantly, such sentiments betray an attitude, especially if coming from someone in a position of power, which can seriously undermine your rightful opportunities to fully participate in the college experience. You need to take note.
Depending on the situation, “You’re just a student” can really mean any and/or all of the following:
1) You’re just a child who should know his/her place, which is to politely and obediently comply with our commands.
2) I am unwilling to show you the respect that I would give to another adult.
3) You don’t really know anything, but we do.
4) Okay, maybe you know a few things, but not nearly as much as we do. Just keep quiet, listen and learn.
5) Let us adults handle the really important issues. Run along and play now.
6) You’ll have to ask our permission if you want to do that.
7) You’re unqualified to challenge us since we are the authorities and you certainly are not.
8) You are fragile and might break if we treat you like an adult.
9) We can easily manipulate you. You won’t even notice that we did it.
10) You are too immature to talk about certain things, like sex, for example.
11) We can make rules up on the spot. Who’s going to know the difference, you? Ha, ha, ha, ha…
12) Why don’t you just wait until you get out of school to ask those kinds of questions? Hmmm? Now go away.
13) We’re not really going to give you the tools to be fully-empowered now. Are you kidding? What, you think we want 30,000 students who know and assert their rights on our campus. As if!
14) If I threaten you, you will blink.
15) We can violate your rights with little concern that you have a clue as to what to do about it.
16) If you misbehave, we’ll send you to the disciplinarian who’ll bench you, give you a time out…or suspend you, you bad boy/girl. Now, is that what you want? Hmmm?!
17) In fact, we have a campus officer called the Disciplinarian to handle when you are bad.
18) We can ignore your rights. After all, you don’t even know what they are. Ha, ha, ha, ha…
19) We’re going to give you praise just for going through the motions. Come to the Board of Trustee meetings where we love to give these kinds of compliments. We’ll clap and applaud and make a big fuss.
20) Why don’t you just take classes, beef-up your resume, move on to a four-year school, and stop causing problems. You’re developing a bad reputation.
21) We don’t really have a high bar of expectations for you.
22) We’re not expecting that you’re expecting us to treat you as an adult.
23) Since you are still conditioned to think like a child, I can act like your surrogate parent, or friendly uncle/aunt and get you to do what I want. May the gods have mercy on those who attack me and who must then face your angry defense of me. Where are my lollipops to reinforce our relationship? What a good boy/girl you are.
24) If we don’t teach you parliamentary procedure or the Brown Act, then you won’t be bothering us by using those tools to hold us, or anyone else, for that matter, accountable.
25) We can use all kinds of delaying tactics to avoid dealing with you. By the time you figure out what we’ve done, you’ll be transferring somewhere else. Problem gone. Mission accomplished! Ha, ha, ha, ha…
26) We can run roughshod over your rights. What are you going to do about it? Huh?!
27) If you were an adult, we could expect so much more.
28) If you were an adult, we could expect you to meet the expectations of the real world.
29) You aren’t qualified to cope, yet, with the real world. That’s for AFTER college.
30) Who the hell do you think you are to try holding us accountable?!
31) I fail to grasp that people rise to the level of their expectations, which is why I treat you as if you are so limited.
32) Don’t imagine that you really have the same rights as adults.
33) We can threaten you and you will get back in line.
34) If we tell you something, just accept it without question.
35) How dare you ask that insolent question, or make that impertinent remark?!
36) Your impudence will go down on your permanent record.
37) Don’t forget, I’m the one who gives out the grades at the end.
38) I’m a professor and you are, what, taking my 101 course? I’ll talk, you listen…and take a lot of notes.
39) You couldn’t possibly go toe-to-toe with me.
40) If you make waves, the rest of the children (whom I have lavished with treats) will be unhappy with you, you won’t have any friends, and everyone will shun you for the troublemaker you are. Your life won’t be worth living. Is that what you want?
41) There is really only so much we can expect from you.
42) You haven’t, yet, earned the rights that adults have earned.
43) You are an empty vessel into which we will pour our knowledge and/or wisdom.
44) Don’t even think about challenging us or our authority.
45) When you get one of these (a Masters or a PhD.) then you will be on our level. You can talk to us as an equal at that time. Maybe.
46) Don’t dare take exception to anything we say and/or do.
47) I can gather all kinds of signatures from students for ballot initiatives if I load my table up with goodies (mostly candy) as incentives. That’s all the motivation they need.
48) We’ll let you know what to think.
49) I’ll hold your hand and help you get through this really scary place.
50) If you get a boo-boo or an owie, we’ll put a band-aid on it.
51) If you write for the school newspaper, try not to upset too many people.
52) If Mommy or Daddy is not around, we’ll substitute in.
53) Being obedient and compliant is equivalent to showing respect.
54) To challenge me, particularly publicly, is to be disrespectful.
55) To not comply with the wishes of others is to be disrespectful.
56) If we tell you how it is, just accept it and go away.
57) You don’t want me to have to bring your parents into this do you?
58) We are unwilling to show you the respect that we would give to another adult. Yeah, okay, I said it already in #11, but it it bears repeating.
59) Children (i.e. you) should be seen and not heard.
60) We will have very little patience for your childishness (which is anything we decide an adult wouldn’t do, or rather, anything we say it is).
61) If you ask a question and I answer, “because I said so,” or “because that’s just the way it is,” be a good boy/girl and accept it.
62) We’ll let you know what books to read, what papers to write.
63) Do you really think you can be trusted to act like an adult?
64) We can’t trust you to understand that cheating is wrong. That’s why we harp on it over and over and over and over… So what if the implication is that you are less than honorable and that our words constitute a form of disrespect and abuse.
65) Do you really think you can be trusted to be self-reliant and self-guiding in your education?
66) We have determined what you need to learn. You couldn’t possibly be trusted to figure that out.
67) You are in no position to criticize us. My god, what could you know?
68) You don’t really think we can respect you as an equal in co-governance do you? Please!!
69) Yeah, we have to act like student government is a co-equal in co-governance, but between us adults, come-on! Get real.
70) It’s easy to pry loose your Associated Student money for administration purposes. After all, the president’s office gets to designate its own advisor to the A.S. Board of Directors. Who do you think they’ll get close to? Who do you think they’ll listen to? Ha, ha, ha, ha…
71) Don’t even try to imagine that you can be a fully-empowered person at your age.
72) That you merely showed up earns you brownie points, happy faces, or gold stars. Which one would you like?
73) If we give you a lollipop, that should satisfy you. Ha, ha, ha, ha….
The Siege has 1,352 others, but 73 is such a nice round number, and besides, you get the idea.
All these attitudes, and many more, minimize you and are presumptuous obstacles to your fuller awakening and participation. You will encounter many of them as you struggle to find your footing and power in the world. Not everyone you encounter at SMC is guilty of the above. But just pay attention and you will discover how pervasive the problem truly is.
The fact is that we are all students, perpetually – even professors. You will find through life that your profoundest teachers (who are truly the wisest) are the ones who humbly and constantly recognize their own student status and are ripe to learn from you, even if they already have incredible learning of their own. In such company, you not only don’t feel minimized, but the expectation that knowledge may flow from you will raise you up and inspire you to express potentials you might have never suspected.
Next up: Second Step – Asserting your Rights
July 26th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
ROTFL!!! Dude!
July 26th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
How about: If you were an adult, we wouldn’t try to pull any of this shit. You might punch our lights out!
July 27th, 2006 at 1:01 am
I couldn’t have said it better! Here’s a few nice quote straight from the horse’s mouth (Robert Sammis to me) verifying your claims:
“The reaction you’re going to get from most administrators in any institution is you’re a student. We’ll take care of that. You’re a student. … Your blog reflects some of that kind of ‘I know better how to run this organization than they do.’ It does. That’s an element of what you have in there.”
When I didn’t comply with going back to being merely a “student”, (i.e., taking down my SAVE SMC blog and staying away from SMC’s sacrosanct public records), Sammis and Campus Disciplinarian Judith Penchansky, took it upon themselves to unilaterally and severely discipline me in violation of the California Education Code, their own internal policies and other federal and state laws.
Perhaps its far time Santa Monica College, acting through its administrators, shed its mantle of “in loco parentis” and let us contribute to the college’s governance as a constituency group worthy of equal merit as responsible adults and not treat us as mere children who need to be scolded for our diverse viewpoints and exercise of our civil liberties and Student Bill of Rights (shhh … you’re not supposed to know that we have a Student Bill of Rights - that’s a well kept secret).
July 27th, 2006 at 10:14 am
As an older student I wouldn’t expect to experience anything like you described. But I have. At least a couple of times I had to let college employees know that they had better find another way to speak to me. They acted like they were talking to a chld. Its probably true that just about every student at SMC is over 18. If you can die for your country by joining the military and going to fight in Iraq, you deserve to be treated like an adult. I just heard about your webblog. I don’t necessarily agree with everything on it, but it seems like a good idea.