Although Monday night's bonfire-style revelries hardly rivals that of the great Buffalo inferno of the winter of 2013 (nor should it ever amount to such, ever again), a catastrophe that took two fire trucks away from other vital community emergencies in surrounding areas (not just Farmville), but resulted in the totaling and then towing of one vehicle.
If it weren't for the memories of that couch burning, Monday's couch may have just been another piece of old college town furniture being burned for a bonfire.
The context of last night, however, was unclear, and fortunately did not result in harm. Whether or not the act was criminal, vandalism, fire hazard, etc., is a separate concern altogether. It was calculated in bad taste to be spread across social media.
Would we have done better not having given the couch-burners notoriety by purposely choosing not to cover and thereby publicize the event? Are we by covering the event giving in to some cultural vogue of political correctness?
Couch burnings take away from valuable town and university resources that have better, needed, uses in times of adverse weather conditions. Couch burnings also take attention away from more relevant news matters.
What we are failing to consider as students is how our actions reflect on our standing as a university community within a larger township, a community.
We may be #LancerStrong in everything else, but when it comes to how our actions affect Farmville and university resources, we are failing to acknowledge our responsibilities here.
While it’s true that we are college students and we might be accorded some degrees of the “privilege of youth,” the symbolic action of the couch burning can no longer be considered only as such. If I must say it, yes, our predecessors had indeed gone too far.
Now it is our responsibility to repair those relations and show that we are citizen leaders and not just kids in a small town with nothing better to do (which is categorically untrue). We are not exceptional because we are college students. Our actions carry as much consequence as do any other citizen’s. We may be at times exemplary for how we apply our privileged education to the common good. This, though, has not been one of those incidences.
Instead of further spreading the notoriety of this incident and risk having it become an anti-tradition, I urge you to thank a groundskeeper for making Brock Commons safe for us to get to class.
Thank an Aramark worker for not calling out of work and bringing us hot meals.
Thank our faculty and staff for making adjustments to their own personal lives, be it hiring another babysitter so they can come to work or creating alternative assignments, to ensure our academic success.
And, of course, thank each other for the time of our lives building snowmen and snow angels. For the stories we will tell our families and, hopefully, our children.
