Andrew JeffreyWhen I arrived at the U of A, I wasn’t expecting to enter a world made entirely of happiness and rainbows, where everyone gets along. Life’s not like that. But I was expecting a community of reasonably mature people who had been through enough and had sufficient experience with human interaction to develop at least some degree of respect for one another.
Oh, how wrong I was.
The more I talk to people in different programs, the more I realize that people here, on average, have hardly more empathy than some of those whom I had the misfortune of being acquainted with throughout high school. There’s a pervasive attitude amongst students of different faculties that their program is best, and everyone else is in some way less intelligent or interesting for studying something different. Nowhere is this more apparent than between engineering students and arts students.
The problem is not exclusive to those two faculties — we all think our program is the most interesting, otherwise we probably wouldn’t have chosen it – but it’s clearly more severe and more harmful. Coming from the perspective of someone in neither of those programs, and having witnessed a significant amount of adversity between the two, I think I can say with reasonable objectivity that the degree of rivalry found here goes far beyond normal levels.
Rivalry is one thing — I mean, Henday is obviously the coolest tower in Lister, for instance. But what we have here is less of a healthy rivalry and more of a genuine hatred of people who have made slightly different decisions. Really, it’s the same old story wherever you go: engineering students think arts students are a bunch of slackers who weren’t smart enough to get into real academic programs, and arts students think engineering students are unfeeling computers who sell their souls in exchange for more courses to complain about.
Engineering students should think twice before putting down arts students, though. The stereotype that people are in arts because they don’t have the grades to go any other route isn’t only hurtful, but also untrue. Many people find their calling in such fields, having cultivated specific skill sets over many years. Having a talent for music but not for math shouldn’t be a reason to ridicule someone. Conversely, arts students should recognize that science and engineering are difficult programs that require obscene amounts of studying to do well in, and that our entire society, economy and way of life are exquisitely built upon technology.
Rivalry is a part of life, and often a healthy one when it entails friendly competition. But when we take it so far as to look down on people who aren’t doing the same things as us, it’s time for a reality check. We should all learn a little bit of respect. We’re all in university, and that means we all have it tough. This midterm season, try for some empathy.
