TO RUSH or not to rush. This would have been an interesting dilemma for me last fall. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to face that decision.
Last spring, when I did have that decision to make, I chose not to rush. But the factors that went into that decision were very different from the things that would have influenced the same decision had I been faced with it in the fall.
By the spring of my first year, I was involved in a number of organizations and activities, and I had established a number of friendships. Deciding to rush would have meant breaking into a brand new social circle. Because of the time demands of rush, this probably would have meant pursuing new social opportunities at the expense of spending time with friends and groups in which I already had made a significant personal investment.
I can't know what I would have decided last fall. I never got to make the choice of whether or not to rush in my first semester here. And more importantly, I never got the chance to face the consequences of my decision, whatever I chose.
A crucial part of life is making decisions, both good and bad, and learning from them. This is especially true of our college years because of the gamut of opportunities available and the huge range of decisions that result. Making a mistake usually is not a bad thing in the long run - we learn from the mistakes we make and we try not to make the same ones again.
The motives underlying the rush move are good, but the policy itself prevents students and organizations from making their own decisions.
Of course, this argument against moving rush can't stand by itself. Certainly there are circumstances that mandate intervention in student affairs, when a mistake will not be a learning experience but a damaging one.
But intervention should be a rare exception, and hands-off oversight the norm. Fall rush was not such a bad thing that its costs to students outweighed the benefits of letting them make their own decisions. For this reason, administrators were not justified in crossing the line between supervision and proactive regulation.
Then-Dean of Students Robert T. Canevari argued in a Cavalier Daily column ("Spring rush brings benefits for all," Mar. 31) that the quality of the first-year experience had improved as a direct result of fall rush, in everything from decreased alcohol abuse to increased student organization involvement.
But Dean Canevari did not take into account that students don't get as much out of these improvements when the decisions that led to them weren't theirs. A good decision made on your behalf is not nearly as worthwhile as a decision you make for yourself, even if that decision is a bad one.
If the only goal of college was to make sure students always made the right choices, students might be happier, but they never would learn to make decisions and be responsible for themselves. In the long run, allowing students to make mistakes for themselves is better than making the right decision for them preemptively.
In his Cavalier Daily column defending the forced move of rush ("Spring rush serves community interests," Oct. 21), former Faculty Senate Chairman Jahan Ramazani argued that fall rush caused first-year students to be "overwhelmed in their first couple of months here by the pressures and exhaustive demands of rush."
Surely, fall rush placed strenuous demands on students before they were able to handle them comfortably. Rush is not easy. Being overwhelmed, not sleeping enough, and pushing time management skills to the limit in the first semester of college is difficult and stressful. But it isn't something that ruins your college career, and it could prove to be an important experience in learning how to be an adult.
If you get through rush successfully, you have pushed your limits, you are more aware of your own abilities, and you know the value of reaching a goal, even if the path to that goal was unpleasant.
After rushing, you may realize that your decision was a mistake. But because you have been through rush, you have gained more knowledge about yourself and your abilities than you could have if you never had the chance to make that mistake for yourself. Such self-knowledge often is much more valuable than the sleep you lost in the process.
And if you decide not to rush, then you will have made an important decision on your own, resisting what may have been the popular option because you realized that rushing in the fall wasn't the best thing for you.
Perhaps adults know something students don't. Maybe fall rush is a mistake, and administrators are right that spring rush is better for the fraternity system. But even if it is a mistake, fall rush isn't so terrible that it warrants intervention into the affairs of a student-run, student-regulated system of fraternities.
Making decisions and living with them is integral to the learning experience of college. Some of the choices that result inevitably will be mistakes. But everyone involved will reap the benefits of making their own decisions. Regardless of whether or not each student's decision is a mistake, the most valuable part of the experience will be dealing with the results of that decision - without adults holding your hand along the way.
(Bryan Maxwell is a second-year College student.)
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