FAMU should make education the top priority and deal with hazing after classes finish. This school is named Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, not Florida Clubs and Organizations University.
We all filled out our applications with intentions of graduating. Anti-hazing meetings are taking us away from our main goals.
“If I didn’t have to go, I’d be in class learning information that is going to help me graduate,” said Mallory Roebuck, a third-year elementary education student from Jacksonville.
On Sept. 20, FAMU canceled all classes and said students and faculty should attend the anti-hazing town hall meeting. Not all faculty and students attended that meeting or even watched the webcast. If someone had a test on Thursday, they would have missed an opportunity to ask final questions on Tuesday.
What if we needed to go to our professors’ office hours for some extra help during the meeting? Nobody considered the fact that some classes only meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which could make students and professors fall behind.
Hazing is a tradition that shouldn’t be repeated, but hazing only occurs with extracurricular activities. I have never seen hazing in my classes, even though some tests feel pretty brutal. Hazing occurs after students walk out of those classes, so why should our classes be canceled to attend a hazing meeting?
But FAMU didn’t stop at the classes. It closed down the Career Center, financial aid, and the Commons. This means students couldn’t get their resumes edited, their net checks deposited or their research papers printed. Jazzman’s Café and the Orange Room, however, were open for business.
“It sounds like they’re more worried about their profits than actual hazing,”said Leslie Blakely, a sophomore animal science student from Tallahassee.
FAMU can interrupt our education but not their profits? It seems like the meeting and money are more important than students’ futures. FAMU needs to make sure that when they “strike out hazing” they don’t strike out education.