The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

Staff Editorial

By Mac Weekly Staff

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down
As much as we appreciate the volume of content we’ve received for this column in the past two weeks, we as editors have decided not to sit idly by and serve as a passive mouthpiece for the opinions of our wonderful peers. As such, we’ve decided to introduce what we hope will be a weekly (or at least semi-weekly) staff-written piece in the spirit of the Minnesota Daily’s “Thumbs-Up/Thumbs-Down” editorial column. We hope it’s not too painful to read.

ResLife makes good
This week we’re giving a thumbs up to the extremely practical (if not very colorful) 2006-07 events calendar Residential Life so graciously handed out to on-campus students at the beginning of the semester. Whatever your personal stance on ResLife’s substance-use and behavioral policies, you certainly can’t say they didn’t warn you about them—the calendar’s very first page contains an expansive list detailing every little thing us dorm-dwellers need to do if we want to stay on our RHA’s good side. And the calendar’s no-frills month-by-month breakdown of all the college’s major events, holidays, and dates to remember might just make up for ResLife’s at-times draconian disciplinary policy. If they’re so reasonable and responsive this early in the year, we might just be able to avoid a repeat of the hastily-toweled doors and awkward early-morning RA encounters that made last year such an adventure.

On second thought, let’s not push it.

“Scratchy, thin, and uncomfortable”

Credit must be given where it’s due—in this case, to our very own Andrew Mirzayi for shattering an unspoken taboo and having the balls to say what none of us really wanted to say. A big thumbs down to the college’s stubborn insistence on stocking its dormitory bathrooms with that translucent bundle of fibers we all know as one-ply toilet paper. ‘Unpleasant’ can hardly do the tactile experience of one-ply paper justice—Katy Petershack ’09 describes it as “scratchy, thin, and uncomfortable.” But we’re realists here—we realize our administration is nothing if not economical (we’re a ‘best buy’, remember?), and frankly, we’re just not sure we’re going to get anywhere by lobbying for change on this one.

Perhaps the best way to take on Mac’s miserly administrators is to stay true to that uniquely Minnesotan form of protest, passive-aggressivism. If we all decide to follow Mr. Mirzayi’s lead and purchase our own personal (two- or three-ply, of course) toilet paper, why should the administration have to bother even stocking our bathrooms at all?

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