Generation Cry Baby
By: Benjamin Mumma
The art of complaining is developed in humans from a very young age. Over the years, it seems that our generation has attained markedly improved skills in this area compared to our predecessors. While most of our parents’ generation couldn’t whine and talk back without getting smacked, our generation was mostly able to avoid such a tragic fate. Whether this is due to the laws in place against child abuse or the compassion of our parents’ generation is uncertain, but it is also beside the point. What we have now is a mass of people in their twenties who find it outrageous when one little thing does not meet their understanding of “fair.”
Here at Lehigh, the student-run press has offered a plethora of examples to prove that this is true. Just last month, an esteemed author wrote a piece in this very paper whining about the internship process and other ways to get rejected in various ways during the spring semester1. Along with that, recent editorials in the Brown and White have provided similar sob stories about the dysfunction of the system that holds back our perfect generation.
First, the housing lottery was attacked. The edit board of the Brown and White decried that the housing lottery “isn’t a fair system2.” To be fair, they did propose a solution: one that was tried before and resulted in complaints from students that they “weren’t ready to make a decision about housing so early3.” All the while, the true problem is being missed. The system is a lottery! How can such an important thing in a student’s life be decided merely by chance? While our parents or grandparents would answer with the cliché that “life isn’t fair,” that won’t work today. Now, the men in charge of the system must explain to us why the random number generator was so biased.
When several houses off-campus were broken into, the edit board suggested that Lehigh needs an office to help students handle living slightly outside of the Lehigh bubble4. To most of us this may sound like a great idea. It’s not our fault if our house is broken into, why should we have to worry about it? Plus, passing off responsibilities to someone else is essential to being a happy person. Doing so allows you to feel accomplished, while someone else manages all the stress that comes along with the task!
Continuing this trend, the Brown and White felt it was necessary to bemoan the registration process at Lehigh. “Even studying for 4 o’clocks is less stressful,” the Brown and White sniffled, adding that the frustration during the fifteen minutes or so of registration “knows no bounds5.” Right about now would be a good time to call up your parents and ask them about their registration process – before computers. After hearing your complaints, any sensible parent would slap you across the face and tell you to grow up and deal with a loading web page for a few minutes.
The attempts to shirk off any and all inconvenient responsibilities are simply the preparation of a symbolic noose for our generation. When we are 35 year-olds and our house gets broken into, can we call up Lehigh and ask the Office of Off-campus Housing Quandary Management (OOHQM) what we should do? Are we going to blame all that is wrong with our neighborhood on former Greek students? Should we ask Alice Gast for a bailout if we can’t find a job? Who do we yell at for only putting 24 hours in a day? All of these questions undermine the fact that one day our generation won’t always be students, eventually we will be in charge of this country. If we don’t change, we’ll be just like the kids asking to re-roll the dice after we land on Boardwalk. As eventual leaders, faulting both randomness and constants in life will be a recipe for disaster.
Every single one of us does this, and to some extent it is just human nature. But as our generation has progressed, we have found a way to take the practice of whining and complaining to a whole new level. In doing so, we continue to condition ourselves to simply look around for someone else to blame our shortcomings on. This works great as long as there is someone there to take the blame. Since this won’t always be the case, every single one of us needs to know what to do when you land on Boardwalk and owe the guy sitting next to you a quick two thousand bucks. Punch him in the face and run away.
Sources:
1 Mumma, Benjamin. Rejection Season. The Lehigh Patriot, April 2009.
2 Edit Board. Housing Lottery Needs a Fix. The Brown and White, 2/20/2009.
3 Ibid.
4 Edit Board. Can We Get a Little Help? The Brown and White, 3/13/2009.
5 Edit Board. Registration Headaches. The Brown and White, 3/31/2009.
