Compromise Is Key

There’s no doubt about it: Many students are angry with the chancellor because they feel their needs are not being met. So why aren’t things getting done?

Well, hmmm. Try reading the first sentence again, then again, then again, then again, then one last time in case you weren’t paying attention the first five times. See the word that starts with an A and ends with an N-G-R-Y? If you still don’t know why things aren’t getting done, maybe you ought to start shaving your head with a Ginsu knife. It might do the world some good.

I don’t mean to sound like Gandhi (well, OK, maybe I do), but fighting is not the answer, my children. Any good marriage counselor would tell you that bickering and calling each other names like “idiot face” and “meanie breath” won’t get the job done. So, what’s the answer?

Compromise, compromise, compromise! When the chancellor proposes that the flesh of the students will decay in the underworld before the Guest Policy is changed, it’s a bad sign, no? Maybe that’s because the chancellor feels his needs would not be met by the change, right? Right! So the next question is, how can both the needs of the chancellor and the students be met?

Well, first of all, maybe it would be a good idea to try and understand where you each are coming from. The students want to have people over later, but the chancellor doesn’t want to hear complaints from students calling him at 11 p.m. saying, “My roommate’s sexual panting noises are making it hard for me to do my calculus.” Each side obviously has more needs than these, but my point is we need to openly listen to his needs (or at least pretend to) before we can expect him to openly listen to ours.

There are, in fact, ways in which both the chancellor’s and the students’ needs can be met. I have many ideas, as I’m sure about 10,000 of us do, and I would share them if The Daily Free Press didn’t need the space for crossword puzzles. But it’s not WHAT we say that’s going to get the job done; it’s HOW we say what we say. As long as this whole argument is taken from an “us vs. the chancellor” perspective, nothing is going to get done. Asking the chancellor to listen to us would be like asking a penguin in the Sahara desert to embrace the sun that is peeling his skin off. If somehow we can take this whole debate from an “us working with the chancellor” perspective, maybe he’ll actually start listening to us.

Now I know what you’re going to say: “Oh, the chancellor doesn’t want to work with us! He just wants us to rot!” Well, I bet he’d be more willing to work with us if we acted as if we cared about his needs and brought him a legitimate proposal in which those needs are still met. As long as we are up in arms about the whole thing, though, it doesn’t matter if we find the perfect compromise between the chancellor’s needs and our own. He won’t want to make it happen.

Of course, a petition might get the job done too …