Letter: Diversity of types of students makes us better off

While Bill English's most recent column was simply riveting, I feel that he forgot several important versions of "student." There's the student as future spouse, for example. And then there's the student as lush--those kids who live for the weekend. Then, we can't forget the student as prisoner. They're here because mom and dad put enough pressure on them to make them come to a "good" school to "get ahead," while all they want to do is live off the folks for a few more years.

Of course there are different versions of students and none of us completely embodies one version! We're not supposed to. We shouldn't be at that point yet--or even ever--where we've stopped trying new attitudes and behaviors and have finished evolving into something new. To try to limit ourselves to one approach to school would be to close our minds and discount all the opportunities that going to a university allows us. If I stuck to a student as scholar approach, I'd never experience the fun that is Franklin Street on Halloween. If I adhered solely to a student as consumer attitude, I'd never take the time to go a little further on my own and try an independent study project. By incorporating all attitudes and ways of viewing "student," we become true students of the world.

As for English's comments on our inability to engage in the political because of our "jumbling of priorities," he overlooks that all people have mixed and matched priorities--not just students. Few people hold to the same priorities all through their lives; we change them as we see fit, according to our present situation and what we see as needing remedy. By having diverse activities, we become more, not less, aware of the public good, because we become in touch with more of the public. We aren't "fragmented" or "compartmentalized," as English argues: Our social circles overlap with all types of people. Having various interactions with different people--consumers, scholars, trainees and lushes--gives us a wider appreciation for what would benefit the public good. By admitting that he doesn't experience this richness of diverse opinions, English is just demonstrating once again how closed-minded he is.