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Responsibility: Three Levels
At my school, we have this thing called the Opinion Board. It struck me when I came to interview as an excellent way to 1) give voice to student concerns and 2) serve as a community forum. I still do think it's a great thing. There is more I might say of this, but I'm really only mentioning it now by way of introduction. What I will post below is my first and only submission to the Opinion Board in my two years here (slightly modified). Such posts stay on the Board for 2 weeks, and since mine has now been removed, I thought I might as well get some extra mileage out of it.
I should point out before I begin that, although it is critical of certain student attitudes, I am by no means suggesting that these are unique to this school--far from it. As long as there are adolescents on the one hand and parents and teacher and adults who care on the other, this criticism will be aired in one form or another, I have no doubt. For that matter, there are many (many many) adults who have not learned the lesson that I hope for my students to learn.
Last night, I went to the weight room for a workout and was surprised to find the room in disarray. There were three sets of dumbbells left out, along with three individual dumbbells; four bars were left out with weights on them, a number of plates from five pounds up through twenty-five pounds were left laying on the floor, and two beverage bottles were left laying around instead of being thrown away.
I said that I was surprised, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been, considering how often the weight room has been left a mess in the past. However, I wasn’t expecting the weight room to be in such a state considering how recently the room was closed for a week after users failed to pick up after themselves. I guess I won’t be surprised when I see a sign on the door closing it again.
In a certain sense, of course, this isn’t my problem. As a faculty member, I have a key to the weight room and will be able to get my workout in even if it is closed to the student population. However, I feel that in a certain sense this is everyone’s problem, because it is indicative of a broader trend within our community of failing to take responsibility for shared spaces. Anyone whose advisory group has had student center clean-up duty should understand what I mean: many ______ students just don’t clean up after themselves, leaving plates, wrappers, empty bottles and food messes behind when they’ve finished eating. The same sorts of things can be seen on any given day in both indoor and outdoor public spaces all over campus.
I would have thought that this sort of basic—very basic—responsibility would have been a lesson that all of you would have been taught by kindergarten at the latest: if you use something, put it away; if you make a mess, clean up after yourself.
Really though, I would identify three different kinds of responsibility that I would hope that _______ students—and everyone else too, but I’ll start here—would show. The most basic is the personal responsibility I just mentioned. If each individual took this level of responsibility, there wouldn’t be any problem. Beyond this is the responsibility to your peers, to keep them honest. If you see a friend leaving the weight room without racking the weights he (or she) used, call him on it, remind him of his responsibility. If you see someone leaving trash behind, call him on it. Help those around you to be better, more responsible people.
Finally, there’s communal responsibility. When others have failed to live up to their responsibilities by picking up after themselves, and trash has been left around or dumbbells have been used and not put away, how do you react? Are you oblivious to the problem? Do you see it and ignore it? Or do you help solve the problem, picking things up or putting things away? This might seem like a strange definition of responsibility to many of you: how, you ask, can one be “responsible” for something one didn’t do? I didn’t make the mess, why should I clean it up? This view, in my opinion, fails to see oneself as connected to the community. It may not be your fault, but once there’s a problem, and blame becomes virtually impossible to assign, the question becomes: who is going to fix it? Are you going to be part of the solution or part of the problem?
Last night, I put most of the weights away, and when I see trash laying around, I take it to a nearby bin, because that’s what a good community member does. However, as an educator I can’t help but feel like I am doing you a disservice if doing so helps you continue to fail to take responsibility yourselves. ______ is a great place in many ways, but I can’t help thinking it would be a far better place if every member of our community learned to take seriously all three of these levels of responsibility, in these and other aspects of our communal life; likewise, our world would be a better place if all of us took those responsibilities to heart and went out into the world doing so and helping others to do so as well.