The Latest |
The Past |
About Me |
The Vault |
Links |
Home! |
Why is everyone so bent on emphasizing the negative and totally missing the positive about poor David's plight? He is a misunderstood soul, one of the many that slips through the cracks at a large university such as our own. If he is wrongfully evicted from his dorm, he will be no less than a martyr to the system. It exists to crush the innocent, and it will certainly do so in this case.
Did anyone even stop to think about why David, or Peter Alexander and Stewart Mandel, the two who committed the exact same "sin" just nine days before, were throwing a football in their dorm? Let's look at this from a logical and reasonable point of view: David, Peter, and Stewart must have been practicing for the event of an actual fire. Just think of the precious seconds that would be saved if one of these three spotted an inferno in their dorm and needed to sound an alarm. Instead of wasting life-saving instants running down the hall and activating the alarm by hand, these three pragmatic go-getters would be able to pick up a football (or possibly any projectile) and throw it ahead to the alarm, freeing up more time for running into their floormates' rooms and carrying them out one by one over their shoulders.
How can they be punished for having such vision and insight? It's Fire Prevention Month, and the only three students who care about fire safety are being persecuted for it. Their ideas are revolutionary, and like all those with revolutionary ideas, they will be persecuted for their views. I say, nay! This cannot be allowed to happen. These three should not be punished for their heroic and selfless actions, but instead honored.
I propose the first annual David Gregg Fire Safety and Awareness Festival, to be sponsored by Residential Life. Not only would it include training by Gregg, Alexander, and Mandel themselves on properly throwing footballs at fire alarms, but other fun and informative activities designed to help increase fire safety in our dorms and residential halls:
--Trampoline Toss, in which students would leap from their dorm windows onto a waiting trampoline to rehearse having to leap from a burning building;
--Shatter and Shout, in which students would practice smashing their dorm room windows and hollering wildly for help to passers-by (the first student to actually get someone's attention would win); and
--Smokin!, in which students would compete in endurance tests to see how much smoke they each could inhale before passing out.
The day would be ended with a film festival at Norris: "Backdraft," "The Towering Inferno," and the heartwarming "Free Willy." The VCR could be started by Gregg hurling a football from the back of the theater to hit the play button. And Gregg would be honored at an upcoming football game by actually playing a quarter as the Wildcat quarterback!
Of course, organizing the Festival and seeing it become an institution will take time; it will be worth it to know that lives have been saved because of its creation. But before action can be taken on the Festival, Gregg, Alexander, and Mandel need to be properly acquitted of their "offenses." What they did needs to be seen for what it obviously was: a valuable service to their dorm and to the community.
After all, it is kind of dumb to imagine their throwing a football inside a busy hallway for no reason, isn't it?