Two This Week in Cartoons in one week? What?! Could such word debauchery be true? Yes, my dear readers, I “accidently” missed my deadline last week so my editor decided to run your favorite student column twice in one week. Yay, for future sample work clippings!
So on to today’s inane commentary.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are a whole lot of students this semester. Like, we’ve hit some sort of enrollment record.
Given the fact that there are so many of us strolling around campus buying $10 Kanye West knockoff sunglasses, why is it that we fail to share this campus among ourselves?
The other day I was frantically looking for a scanner to turn in one of my cartoons. Because I don’t own one and I’m rarely at the Daily Forty-Niner office, you will find me at one of the Horn Center’s brand new Macs with Epson scanners doing my job.
As I walked past every occupied Mac a with scanner, I noticed that not one single student was using the scanner. They were either checking their e-mail or sending MySpace messages to their friends.
Although I won’t lie and say that I don’t do the same from time to time, I was deeply infuriated and saddened at the fact that not one of them was willing to let me use their scanner.
I approached two of them, politely asking if they were using the scanner because I really needed to use it.
What impressed me the most was their reaction.
How dare I ask for a favor when it was obvious they were using the computer? Like I was some sort of salesperson asking them to buy vanilla-colored encyclopedias.
And it doesn’t stop there.
What about the random student who takes up a whole table for themselves, while groups of four or five desperately seek for a place to eat their cold homemade tacos?
Or those of you who hold back the lines at Subway because you were too busy chatting it up on your cell phone instead of deciding whether or not you wanted tomatoes in your tuna foot-long!
We could turn this around and make it a positive thing. Next time you see one student sitting at a table for four, ask him or her politely if you and your friends can share the table.
Who knows, maybe that student is a scared-to-make-new-friends freshman who will walk out with brand new buddies. Or whatever.
— Julio Salgado