By Jonathon Baron
Gargoyle assistant editor
Posted Thursday, March 2, 2006, The OG, opinions

All the time, I hear that Uni's supposed to be a special environment for kids who'd prefer to be somewhere more sophisticated than the average public school.

In some ways, Uni really lives up to this reputation, giving us the right to leave our lockers open, go anywhere on campus during our free periods, and trash the lounge.

But while we do enjoy freedoms that students at other schools might dismiss as impossible, in terms of discipline, we're not very different.

Wednesday morning, I had my cell phone taken away from me, and I will say that it really annoyed me. I had turned it on just to take a picture, and I was planning on turning it back off and leaving it that way for the rest of the day. But when Assistant Director Sue Kovacs came into the lounge and saw me standing there with my phone on, she demanded that I turn it over.

I obviously thought that this was ridiculous. School hadn't even started, and I had only turned it on for a few seconds to take a picture. If my phone had been on and ringing in classes, it would be my own fault when it was confiscated. But this was totally nonsensical in my eyes.

I don't see why we have to have rules like this at Uni. It totally disproves the concept that we're special and less inhibited than students at other schools. My friends at Central and Urbana have their cell phones on all day and have no problems using them when they're out of class, so why should Uni be any different? I wasn't even talking on it -- I was taking a picture! I don't see how that can act as a disruption.

Throughout my stay at Uni, I've constantly witnessed foolish rules being put into place.

Subbie year, when some of my friends and I crossed Green Street during the Engineering Open House, we were suspended from school for the day, even though we're allowed to cross the street every other day of the year with no penalties.

Freshman year, I was accused of harassment because I laughed at a stupid joke someone made in health class.

Last year, the administration went ballistic over lists that some boys were making, when the matter should have been dealt with more calmly.

And this year (in addition to this cell-phone annoyance), the administration was up in arms about students potentially doing drugs at private parties.

I feel that Uni is overextending its boundaries. The point of discipline isn't to try to expel as many people as humanly possible, but rather to make sure that there's a healthy environment between the students and faculty.

“I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.”
— Ché Guevara

[Note: This column can also be found as a March 2 entry in the Gargoyle staff blog.]