No news is good news

I know this is an exciting time of year. Everyone is recharged after a summer free from readings, essays, and exams. The weather is beautiful, you have your pick of booze-fueled bacchanalia every night of the week, and there isn’t an assignment in sight for the next two weeks at least.  If ever there was a moment during the school year to cut loose and have a good time, this is it.

Please though, I’m begging you, try not to do anything too stupid.

I just ran a Google news search on ‘Dalhousie’. The top results included an alleged drug war, student-on-student homicide, a security lockdown over the threatened assassination of a dean, a raging inferno, starving students, and a resilient rape culture.

We’re reaching a critical mass of negative news coverage. Content-hungry reporters smell blood in the water. Dalhousie is developing a reputation for producing compelling, seedy, low-hanging stories, like some sort of 24/7 Trump press conference. Network vans stalk the outskirts of campus whenever it’s a slow news day, the reporters inside salivating in anticipation of the next sordid tale from our little hotbed of privilege and poor life-choices. Things that might have gone largely unnoticed in previous years will be dissected under the media microscope this time around—we’re one clueless freshman’s Dukes of Hazzard poster away from the CBC branding our campus ‘Ferguson North’.

We need to take control of this situation. I know it may be tough, but we need to go at least a semester without producing a national scandal. We need to treat each other with respect and compassion, and we need to make sure to make smart decisions that don’t end in grainy videos trending on TMZ.

I know this won’t be a problem for most of you. If behaving like a decent human being isn’t enough incentive to shape up though – then, well, you’re probably the kind of person I’m trying to reach.

The thing is, there are plenty of self-serving reasons to rein-in the douchebaggery. Aside from salvaging the reputation of your future degree, you need to consider the immediate financial costs of your behaviour.

According to the University, Dalhousie spent over $650,000 last year dealing with the fallout from the Dentistry scandal. That’s $50,000 per Facebook-group man-child, and probably closer to $150,000 if you only count the ones who were actively posting gross content. If that’s the going rate for damage control on some disturbing posts made on a private Facebook page, then I’m sure Dalhousie accountants are white-knuckling their calculators right now as 18,000 returning Tigers rampage their way back into the city with all the subtlety of Attila’s horde.

The money spent managing student indiscretions is coming directly out of our tuition. For the self-obsessed assholes out there who fail to see the problem, what do you think will happen when your parents can no longer afford to foot the bill for your four-year excuse to avoid the responsibilities and expectations of the real world?

(Let’s just say that while your morning-class prof may not care if you shuffle into the auditorium 40 minutes late wearing last-night’s clothes and a pair of sunglasses, the shift manager at Tim Hortons will be less understanding of your Tuesday night kegger commitments.)

Clearly, we need to lock this down now.

A few humble suggestions for avoiding potentially newsworthy screw-ups:

• If you find yourself in a bitter dispute with a professor or professors, instead of threatening violence against them, take a deep breath and simply email them a copy of NS Bill 100. Why threaten their ephemeral mortal lives when you can crush their immortal soul?

• Unless you are a seasoned local, avoid Dartmouth. I have a century and a half worth of anecdotes and Gazette articles that indicate nothing good ever comes of naive Dalhousians crossing the harbour. If someone proposes a trip to Ralph’s Place, for the love of God, start slashing tires.

• Avoid making Bill Cosby jokes. A moment may come this semester when you think you have the perfect Cosby joke that that world needs to hear. Sleep on it. If you still think it’s a good idea to tweet it in the morning, email me. I will come over, guide you to the nearest campus construction site, and pulverize your phone and laptop into a fine powder using heavy machinery.

• Do not publicly declare your support for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State. This has not yet been a problem on campus (as far as I’m aware), but the way things have been going, I figured I’d address this before a deadline-pressed reporter pops out of the bushes and tries to goad you into it.

I know that this sort of consistent application of common sense and restraint isn’t going to be easy for everyone. If you feel weak though, remember, we don’t have to be perfect forever—we just need to hold things together until SMU screws up in a national scandal kind of way. It’s been almost two years now, so they’re definitely overdue.