Veteran’s Day

By: Jeremy Hobson, COM Junior, hobson@bu.edu

First of all, I’d like to commend the Daily Free Press for breaking the story: “BU Students Attend Classes on Holiday.” I’m glad to see that the DFP staff took a holiday by taking advantage of “news you can plan for.” Now, may I be the first to say: Quit your bitchin’. There are many more important issues before us than whether or not we get a couple hours off of school. Some blamed the Boston University administration for showing disrespect towards veterans by continuing with classes Monday. While I’m sure the BU administration would be more than happy to show the same lack of respect for veterans that they show to everyone else, I don’t think this was a motivating factor in keeping us in school. In fact, quite to the contrary, I think this is the first act of good will towards students that the administration has shown in quite a while. I mean, they actually lost money by keeping us in class. BU had to pay the faculty to teach, not to mention the monstrous electric bills they’ll be paying for all of the hidden cameras that had to stay on in university classroom buildings. On a more serious note, one student was quoted in the article as saying he would like to have the day off to remember his grandfather’s military service. While I certainly have no intention of disagreeing with that claim or disrespecting his right to observe his ancestry, I doubt any student would spend an entire day thinking about one thing. I have a hard enough time concentrating on one subject for more than an hour. Which brings me to my final point. Perhaps instead of granting students the day off to observe the veterans of this country (which I’m sure most of them won’t even do), how about requiring all classes taught on Veteran’s day to be focused on the tragedy of war? Maybe if students were required to spend an entire day learning about the military history of this country, and the awful consequences of senseless violence, we would be more aware of the disastrous effects of war, and we would stop creating so many veterans for the BU administration to disrespect.