| Why can’t students wait their turn in line? |
by Peter Nguyen
NGU04002@BYUI.EDU
Scroll Staff |
When it comes to attending organized events, BYU-Idaho turns into a Third World country. Students throw elbows, some students are trampled and others become nauseous at the very smell of 800 students crammed into tightly enclosed areas.
Recently there have been some high profile events that caused commotion at the BYU-I ticket office. First was the inauguration of President Clark. The morning tickets went on sale so many students logged onto the BYU-I Ticket Office Web site that they managed to crash the server. However, it’s not online that the true chaos occurred; it was the herd of cattle-like students who rushed to the ticket office to get tickets.
Here’s what some students did just to get tickets to listen to President Gordon B. Hinckley, the prophet, seer, revelator and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
One student stood in front of the office window and started a line. Then her friend stood next to her, then her friend stood beside her. Then, a complete stranger came up and asked, “Is there a line?” Nobody answered him so he just kind of clumped together with the rest. This continued until nearly the entire ticket office area was filled with random students who thought they were at the beginning of the line.
To solve the chaos, a semblance of a line was created, but then the “cutting” began. Now, the more Christian of us may not know what “cutting” actually is. Cutting is a dishonest act of selfishness that allows one to receive some sort of service ahead of another person who was queued in line first.
Wow, BYU-I students actually cut in line to hear the voice of a prophet. They must have been very eager to feel the spirit of his presence.
It didn’t just end with the line to get the tickets. On the day of the inauguration there was a self-created line of students that wrapped around the halls of the John W. Hart Building. To some, that line meant nothing. Instead, the more dishonest students decided it would be OK to ignore the line and clump together in front of the doors.
The students who were actually in a line realized that the longer they stood in line, the farther back they were getting because of those miscreants who decided to clump at the door. Some students began to vocalize their dismay. The words, “Hey, there’s a line,” could be heard ringing through the halls. Their words rang with no effect. Instead, the opposition hollered back with, “There’s no ‘official’ line, it’s every man for himself.”
What an incredibly saintly attitude.
Then hope came in the form of a voice over the P.A. system. The voice basically asked everybody to preserve the spirit of the occasion and to form an orderly line. Those who had been advocating a line leapt for joy; they looked triumphantly at those who thought they could get ahead by cheating and cutting in line. Their joy was soon gone as they realized that hardly anyone was obedient and no one in the clump formed into a line.
The inauguration is just one example of how students at BYU-I will resort to dishonesty and selfishness just to get a good seat at an event.
A similar situation happened at Guitars Unplugged where Lauren Smith, a senior from Hanford, Calif., said: “There were so many people just crammed together, I thought I was going to die of the stink! People were pushing each other and getting angry with each other.”
We encourage the organizers of BYU-I events to start facilitating lines, and to hire ushers to enforce those lines, since students must be compelled to be obedient. We encourage BYU-I students to contact the appropriate administration, and/or Ammon Fife, student body president, to express to them the need for a method to stop dishonest and selfish students from cutting in lines.
Finally, we ask that all BYU-I students be more considerate of others at all places and at all times.
HELPFUL LINKS
