To all those people who steal food from the dining halls or scan and leave at men’s basketball games: What the hell is your problem? You are doing something wrong. You are stealing other people’s money, time and opportunity. You can try to justify your actions any way you want, but the obvious fact is what you’re doing is wrong.
You know what, scratch that. You can’t justify your actions any way you want. You certainly can’t justify your actions the way you’ve been doing so far: “They are just doing what they have to. If you want to complain that it’s not fair, then that means you should blame the system,” or, “when the dining halls stop stealing money, students will steal food less.”
Oh, is the “system” too harsh? Is your deplorable behavior someone else’s fault? Are you really taking a moral stance by engaging in theft? Come on now, that’s just plain stupid. You are not a shining beacon of justice exposing the wrongs of Dining Services. You are not a calculating operator slipping through the broken cracks of the ticketing system. You are a selfish, immature little brat who feels entitled to whatever you want no matter the moral cost.
The case is pretty cut and dry in regard to the Dining Services problem: There is food. You are supposed to pay for said food. When you slip this food into your hoodie pouch and walk out the front door of the dining hall, avoiding legitimate transaction for food, you are being a crass thief. There is nothing that makes this OK. You are not starving, and you have the means to feed yourself, you just choose to steal because you think you’re being treated unfairly. Whether the “oppression” you live under is real or imagined, crime is obviously not an acceptable response. The oppression is imagined, by the way. You’re not being robbed on focus dates. You’re being taught an important lesson in eating normally and budgeting strategically. And anyway, why not buy and hoard extra food with all that extra money that’s being “stolen” from you, Einstein? That makes a lot more sense than stealing the food. Between the lame cause and brainless tactics, the dining hall thief is a truly special brand of freedom fighter.
Scanning and leaving basketball games is the same story. Friends of mine could not get tickets to the Illinois or North Florida games. Not only do they want to see the Terps play Duke, but they genuinely wanted to watch the team tune up against early season opponents. Let’s go ahead and do the moral calculus together here. Who deserves the ticket more? The students who show up to games and want to watch the game and get loyalty points, or the students who just want loyalty points? The system isn’t broken; it’s working just fine. It aims to award points to loyal students. You are not a loyal student. You are a free-rider who benefits at the expense of actual Terp fans. You’re the one who shows up at Comcast Center for the first time in late January wondering why D.J. Strawberry isn’t in the starting lineup, while fans who would cheer for Dino Gregory and Cliff Tucker get left out in the cold. You need to stop blaming the system for your bad behavior and start taking responsibility for your own actions.
And that’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it? Responsibility. It’s the barometer by which we determine just how adult and mature someone is. It tells us how much we can trust one another and how to act accordingly. Why is it that you shirk responsibility for your actions onto the ticketing system and the Dining Services overlords? If you really think the problems are that bad, take the moral high ground and fix them the right way. Grow up. Stop stealing for petty reasons. Stop justifying your behavior like a 9-year-old. Start taking responsibility.
Daniel Kobrin is a senior government and politics major. He can be reached at dkobrin@umd.edu.
