When was the last time you left food on a table in the Grille? When was the last time you  texted while your teacher lectured? When was the last time you tossed The Trinity Voice on the ground, leaving it to be gathered in scraps by the cleaning staff? Throughout this school year we have lost our grip on the way we treat the faculty and staff of Trinity. It seems as if overnight we’ve fallen into a state of disregard for manners and respect.

In any given class, our students can be found zoning-out mid-discussion, scrolling through their Twitter feed or murmuring pointless conversation to their friends across the room. What we may think is discrete, harmless manner is actually an obvious disruption of class for teachers. As busy Trinity students, we are so focused on other things that we sometimes don’t pay attention to the weight of our actions.

The fact is that the rules haven’t changed recently, so why exactly are we acting so disrespectfully all of a sudden? Is it because teachers are actually starting to enforce the dress code and not let us get away with T-shirts on normal school days? Is it because we are actually getting in trouble for talking in chapel and assembly?

Whatever the cause may be, there are no excuses for the way many of us have been acting lately.  You might be so wrapped up memorizing World War II facts that you don’t even notice that you abadnoned your half-eaten Saint sub on the Grille table.  You might not recognize the volume of your voice in the library. But whether our behavior is intentional or not, we must accept there is a cost of ignorance.

Although we learn in an environment where independence and voiced opinions are encouraged, we tend to falter in the awareness of our actions. Our community in the classroom is far from hostile at Trinity, and we must acknowledge that the “be quiet or a meter stick will hit your desk” era of education is far behind us. The faculty and staff here typically don’t live up to the adverse, unsympathetic stereotype we try to put them into. They aren’t the animated villains we build up in our heads.
When you receive a constant flow of Cs from a teacher, it’s not just out of spite or because he or she doesn’t like you: grades are a marking of work ethic, not character. Teachers want to see us as mature young adults, so we shouldn’t give them reasons to think otherwise.

We don’t respect many faculty members as our equals, let alone as our superiors, so we should make an effort to see situations from their point of view. The old saying “think before you speak” is not to be an outdated phrase. Class after class I see others, and sometimes even myself, rise above my limits as a student. Yes, we should stick by our personal morals, and yes, we should feel comfortable in expressing concerns to a higher authority in the class, but whining or being rude is not the answer. We are all independent in our own ways, but it’s time to get off our angst-teenage-years high horse and act the way we want to be treated.

The lead editorial expresses the opinion of the Trinity Voice editorial staff.  Send comments to [email protected].