The Upperclassmen Power Complex

  So, I have to say that I have finally found something that I liked better at NCSA than I do here at Purchase. And that’s the upperclassmen. Here, in the wonderful Design/Tech department of Purchase, the upperclassmen have that "Let’s make the freshman do it" complex. Let’s go over the events of today’s "crew call" to explain what I mean.

Okay. We have a load-in on Sunday so we had a crew call to get the all the tools and such things into the roadbox. That’s all well and good, should be a quick process, like 10 minutes. However, since that only was a 10 minute process and the call was for 3 hours, the upperclassmen decided to use us to their advantage to their dirty work that they were supposed to do. For example, we have to take an elevator up Paint Deck to go to the dumpster for trash. Of course this is the Freshman’s job as all of the upperclassmen sat around. I mean, just sat there. I wouldn’t have minded so much if they were working on something else. But no, this was supposed to be what they are going to do. We also had to reface all the work tables, another job that THEY were supposed to do.

Now, I’ve already been a freshman in a shop once, so having to go through the process again is no fun. And I have to say that the upperclassmen at NCSA did not have this attitude at all. Honestly, I think the whole Freshman "hazing" or "initiation" or whatever you want to call it is just retarted. All you’re doing is breeding a program of people who base everything on seniority instead of skill or merit. You’re also building a bit of animosity between the classes, so instead of having a collaberative program with varying classes, you have groups of classes.

Well that was my rant for the day. It was bothering me all through crew, so what better place than OD.