The Silent Room

I got [yet another] forwarded message via Yahoo Messenger [YM] today. It read:

Dear MMUians, PLS PAY ATTENTION!!! Today, SECURITY of the library has stopped my friend from bringing her book into the library. She told my friend that we can only read the library’s books and not our own. If we wanna read our own textbook, we can only do it at the library foyer. MMU Students please wake up, the security guards have taken over our campus lifestyle and the SRC has DONE NTH to protect our rights. We pay to study here but we are restricted as where to study in campus, given summons for how we dress.Do you want your life being restricted? Start doing sth, SRC…PLS FORWARD…they even summon us for having long hair…WTF wrong with MMU?simply giving summon?MMU Dean run out of money to build his new fac?COMPLAIN THEM..

Sorry for bursting your bubble kids, but there’s something called Rules and Regulations, as well as a Prospectus. When you decide to enrol in a university [not some private college] you are expected to obey the set rules. You paid high fees to STUDY, you didn’t pay so you can dress how you like and complain about being punished for breaking the rules. Get my drift yet?

Okay, okay, fine. I know you’re just a mentally under-developed rodent trapped in an overgrown primate’s body due to some freak’s high school biology project. Allow me to elaborate further, then.

Long hair? Dressing style? It’s all about professionalism. You say you have all the right to dress how you like, but do you really? You are students, people of academic and intellectual stature, there’s no need for you to put yourself at the same level as morons at Bukit Bintang trying to look hot.

Yes, I keep long hair, I even put it up in a ponytail. I’m not saying that I have every right to keep it. Yes, I accept the fact that I have broken the university’s dress code. In fact, I do believe that I’m doing the wrong thing by keeping a ponytail. It’s not a professional dress code.

However, I chose to keep the ponytail not because I feel rebellious. It’s just because I like having a ponytail. It’s nice. It’s against the rules, but it’s nice. Not because it breaks the rule. But because, it feels nice. Okay back to the topic.

The point is, the dress code is there for a reason. If you dress like a bunch of party-goers in class, what if visitors [MMU gets a lot of them] come and notice it? It gives off a terribly bad image, and before you know it, they won’t employ MMU graduates because of the impression they get from how the students dress.

Don’t talk shit about looking at academic qualifications. First impressions play a very important role if you wanna land a job. That, and probably because its the new academic year and MMU is crazy about keeping up to its ISO standards and shit. If the university fails to get the standard, again, its the graduates who will suffer.

“[in the library] we can only read the library’s books and not our own. If we wanna read our own textbook, we can only do it at the library foyer.”

Okay, I admit this is a pretty stupid rule. If they’re afraid that students would steal library property, well, I’ll be a llama’s uncle. If you just simply take library property out without registering it at the borrowing counter first, the security alarm would go off and every security officer and librarian will go Neanderthal on you before you can even say ‘Fourier Transform’.

For what other reason, would you put the security tag in the book, and security scanners at the library entrance, you gray-haired management twats? Did your cerebrum dry up and you had to leave all the thinking to your kneecaps?

But dude, seriously. You’re not doing it the right way. Simply raising the anger of the students won’t solve shit. Simply claiming the Student Representative Council [SRC] does nothing won’t solve shit either. All you’re doing is venting out your anger, making other people angry, and TELLING them to complain instead complaining yourself.

Sheesh. You’re a member of an academic society. Behave like one, for God’s sake.